


If I Can Live Through This, I Can Do Anything

by JDisTired



Category: Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alright guys I'm branching out, Appropriate use of medication, Dank Memes, Dark Humor, Dealing With Trauma, Emetophobia, Family Issues, Gallows Humor, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Government Conspiracy, Graphic Description of Corpses, Homophobia, Human Experimentation, Humor as a coping mechanism, I will add tags as I go along, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Medical Trauma, Mental Health Issues, Nonbinary Character, Platonic Relationships, Suicidal Thoughts, Superpowers, The power of friendship, This is filled with primarily OCs, This is your generic zombie outbreak fic, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, also maybe torture?, also there's violence? i mean it's resident evil so it's kind of a given, and gays, but I may bring in some characters from the gameverse, decomposition, discussions of mental health, for now, fourth wall breaks, governmental fuckery, i don't plan on adding smut but who knows what will happen, i may link the fic in the summary if the author is comfortable with it, i will be sure to put a warning at the beginning of each chapter, not explicit but probably referenced, photophobia, pop culture references, shaky science at best, some parts get icky in terms of disrespecting trans people, the rating may change later, there is no plan here, this is my first multi chapter fic on ao3, this was inspired by a spideypool fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2020-03-05 19:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18834994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JDisTired/pseuds/JDisTired
Summary: For a moment, one blissful moment that morning, everything was still normal. I would have gone to class later that day, gone to lunch, played video games, eat rice, gone about my fucking normal life like everyone else would have done that day.But that wasn’t the case.





	1. Same Shit Different Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I know I normally write for a different fandom, but I haven't written Resident Evil fanfiction since high school. I wanted to get back to my roots, you could say.  
> Also, I graduated from college! I promise I will get to my other fic about the vampires but I felt the inspiration for this and needed to get it out before I lost it.  
> This is mostly a retelling of the events at Raccoon City back in the late 90s, but it takes place now in a different, probably not real city in Vermont with new characters and all that millennial/Gen Z humor we know and love. I'm going in without a plan, my good bitches, so let me know if I left a plot hole or if my logic in some places could be expanded on/made more clear.

I didn’t realize how bad my headache was until a few minutes after I had woken up. The sunlight streaming through my curtains had at some point during the morning, landed on my pillow which was where my head happened to be. I groaned and brought my comforter over my head to block out the light. While my eyes stopped hurting for the most part, the pounding in my skull didn’t stop. I tried to stay under the blankets for as long as I could, but after a little bit I started to feel unpleasantly warm.

I flung the sheets off my upper body and rolled over to my other side, trying to avoid the blinding light. My eyes were sensitive to begin with, but waking up to direct sunlight made the transition from sleep to wakefulness even more difficult.

I rubbed the crusties out of my eyes and sat up. Evidently, I had forgotten to entirely close my curtains the night before. I was probably too inebriated to remember most of my nightly routine, based on how gross my mouth felt and how oily my face was.

The air in my room felt a little stagnant, leaving me to guess that the A/C was not fixed yesterday like the work order sheet on the counter claimed. I got home from work relatively late, so I couldn’t tell immediately because of how cool the nighttime felt. Most of my things were still in boxes, in spite of having lived in the apartment for about six months. I utilized some of the space in my closet for work clothes and all three pairs of shoes that I owned. The rest of my clothing was folded neatly in a laundry basket or shoved into a small mesh bag (the latter generally held under garments). I looked to my left and saw a bowl with a few lingering popcorn kernels and a half-empty glass of rum and soda.

I fully kicked the blankets off of my body and rolled off of my futon. I knew for sure it was too warm in my apartment because the hardwood flooring wasn’t as cold as I had expected it to be.

My feet stuck to the floor as I wandered to my tiny bathroom. I had only a few things on the counter, just the necessities to get one throughout everyday life. The first thing I did was brush my teeth, after which I feel significantly less disgusting. I turned on the shower after spitting out my mouthwash and waited maybe a few minutes before getting in. It was not a day for a steamy shower.

The water started lukewarm, so I didn’t freeze myself immediately. It already felt refreshing just to stand under the water. I worked fast though to clean myself. I didn’t want to get caught under the freezing cold, no matter how warm it was outside of the bathroom.

When I emerged from the shower, my headache was still there. I didn’t know how I could be hungover from only three glasses of rum and soda, because if I had about two shots in each glass then I only had about five in total since I never finished the third glass. As I came to that realization, I understood how five shots without drinking any water before falling asleep could lead to a hangover. The more I tried to remember, the more my head seemed to hurt so I stopped trying and dressed myself in the least amount of clothing as possible. There was no point in sweating in clean clothes if I had no plans of leaving my apartment that day.

I remembered at that moment, that it was Tuesday and I in fact, had classes on Tuesdays.

I tossed around the comforter and pillow on my bed until I heard something clatter on the floor. My phone’s screen was on, so it was entirely possible that my alarm went off already and was about to again. I checked the time and was relieved to see that I still had about an hour to get ready and make it to campus.

I ran my hand through my still-damp hair, my hand coming back a little blue. I had recently dyed it, and forgot my oath to not wash my hair every day so I could keep the color longer. Oh well, that morning was a special case given how gross I felt.

The kitchen was almost right outside my bedroom, and while my single-cup coffee maker (not one of those pod things, an actual machine that brewed enough for one cup) filled the space with the scent of coffee, I placed a bowl of white rice in the microwave. While it heated up, I scanned my refrigerator for any protein I had already cooked. I had finished the fried tofu two days ago, and the chicken that was pushed to the back of the fridge may not have been safe for consumption by then. Accepting defeat, I grab the soy sauce from the shelf as I left the door shut (shut up, it said on the packaging that soy sauce needed to be refrigerated). Somewhere in my cabinets, hid a bottle of sesame oil as well, but I was in no mood to find it.

The microwave began to beep loudly before I could stop it at one second, and somehow that whole experience made my day a little worse. I grabbed my bowl of rice and stirred it to make sure all of it was heated up, pouring just a little bit of soy sauce into it.

With my cup of coffee and bowl of rice, I sat down at the coffee table in my living room. Don’t ask me why I didn’t have a couch, couches are expensive and the one I had before hurt my back so bad I let a friend have it instead. So I had a single coffee table in my living room.

I started to eat my rice when I noticed the bottle of sesame oil on the table. The universe provides. I poured a little into my bowl and mixed it some more.

Eventually, with a weird aftertaste of coffee and rice, I started to get dressed for the day. I didn’t have work that evening, so I just went with the clothes that were the most comfortable to wear. Black jeans and a Deadpool/Spider-Man graphic t-shirt. I was grateful to find a pair of socks that matched, but I nearly smacked my head on the wall as I pushed my feet into my shoes. Great start.

I checked my phone again to see the time. I needed to be leaving soon.

It was while I grabbed my backpack that I remembered that I needed to charge my laptop during the night, but I wasn’t too bothered by it. If my laptop was dead, then I wouldn’t have to participate as much in class.

My anatomy professor’s disappointed face came to mind and I immediately felt bad and decided that I would visit the library to let it charge in between classes. The professor of my first class of the day had a stick up his ass about technology of any kind. I wondered if he feared fire and had heart attacks any time he lit a match for his cigarettes in between classes. He was only a decade older than me and thought that he was hot shit because he still used typewriter and insisted on killing thirty trees a semester with his handouts. One day he told us how much better his life had gotten when he stopped watching television and only read from the newspapers; it took everything in me to not tell him to shut the fuck up, smoke a blunt while he pulled the stick out of his ass and look at more than one news source. He taught Classic Literature. Go figure, right?

I locked the door as I left my apartment, unlocked it and went back in after the change in lighting worsened the already present headache.

I forgot my sunglasses.

I grabbed them from the counter and left, locking my apartment once more.

Tricyclic antidepressants were the first antidepressants that went on the market in the 1950s. They had a lot of unpleasant side-effects though, so eventually, SSRIs were distributed instead. For some of us though, the newer ones didn’t help manage depression as well, which left me stuck with doxepin and wicked photophobia.

I let my head hit the door, unlocked it, and went to the bathroom to take my medication.

After taking my medication, I left my apartment (for real this time), locked the door, and began walking towards the street. By all accounts, it was a normal day. A little overcast, but I expected it to clear up a little after my first class.

I was glad to see that I remembered in my drunken stupor to put my headphones in my backpack at some point last night. The worst part was trying to figure out what mood I was in today; was I up for Carly Rae Jepsen’s upbeat and take-on-the-day vocals, or some chill beats from The Cure?

I settled for the new Gorillaz album and made my merry way to Harland Community College. I hoped that my best friend was in class today, because she made dealing with the professor a hundred times easier. Something about her ability to make snarky remarks under her breath.

 

I managed to get into class before Professor Nitwit did, in fact, I was actually about ten minutes late and he still wasn’t there.

My classmate, Nana, was sitting at our table with her headphones in, probably listening to Kpop while browsing Twitter. I claimed the seat next to her and started to take out my binder when she took her headphones off, Block B playing loudly.

“Don’t bother, I don’t think he’s coming in.” She said. I noticed she didn’t have anything out either. In fact, when I looked around the room, I noticed that other students were talking, but no one had a notebook or pencil out yet.

“Did he send an email and I just don’t know it?” I asked.

“I mean, you know how he is. He’d sooner choke on Oscar Wilde’s dick before using a computer.” Nana said nonchalantly.

“I don’t know why he teaches Dorian Gray if he hates it so much.”

“I _liked_ it.” She shrugged, “But anyway, we are legally allowed to leave class if he’s fifteen minutes late, he’s got like three minutes.” She held her pencil out, wearing a grin that said ‘Dear God, please let class be cancelled’.

Our classmate who sat in the front row, I didn’t remember her name, Kelly or Katie or something, turned to face us. “I tried that on a professor last semester and apparently we have to stay until the professor says class is cancelled.”

Nana groaned, “I could be sleeping, man. I got shit I need to finish before my next class.”

The student turned around in her seat, going back to her previous conversation with others.

I checked my phone again on the off-chance he actually did email us and I just didn’t notice it, but no. I didn’t have any notifications from him. Just as I was about to put my phone down though, I received a notification stating that the northern part of Harland was without power.

Nana looked over my shoulder, “Oh shit, what do you think happened?” She asked.

“Dunno, it says it’s still being investigated. Did it storm last night?”

“Nah, man, I slept like a baby. I don’t think it even rained.”

For the next thirty minutes, we dicked around in the classroom, waiting for the professor to show up. By then, a few students had already walked out, going about their day to finish assignments before their next class or go to lunch early.

Nana stood, rolling her headphones up and putting them into her backpack. I followed suit. Clearly, the professor wasn’t coming, and we had other things we needed to do. Nana needed to finish a paper for her next class and I needed to charge my laptop.

 

The library was a relatively neat place to study. The building itself was plain looking, kind of like any other public library you’d pass walking down the street. But something about the inside was really encouraging in terms of me making attempts at doing my work.

We picked a table close to a large window. I knew that natural lighting helped Nana stay more focused and energized, so I let her take the seat that was closer to it. I didn’t mind so much, because at least the sun wasn’t shining super bright. My eyes could handle it with the shades.

Nana and I mostly worked in silence, she on her essay and me on a project I had been assigned a week ago and was due tomorrow. It looked easy at first, but I soon realized that maybe I shouldn’t have put it off until the last minute. At least I wasn’t doing it right before class like I had done with many other assignments. Occasionally, Nana and I would send a few memes at each other via Twitter from her account #cryingpupusas. Either of us would snicker and get back to our work.

I checked the time, noticing that I had maybe another ten minutes before my next class began. I sent a text to Nana telling her that I was leaving soon. I told her to say hello to her next professor for me, since Nana and I shared a class instructed by her the previous semester. Professor Graham was an angel who taught Shakespearean literature and the occasional nonfiction writing class.

Nana gave me a wave as I packed my things; she had the class block that happened after mine, so she still had about an hour to get her essay done. She put her headphones in and I could hear the Kpop beginning to play.

I made my way out of the library, tossing a nod at some of the staff I made friends with over the last three years. The sky was still pretty overcast when I walked outside, which I wasn’t complaining about too much. I did like the feel of the sun on my skin though.

It was a short walk to the science building, but getting up the stairs was the worst part of it. Especially because there was usually a fifty-fifty chance the elevator was working that day. My class was on the third floor and the entrance I was using was on the first. I could take the stairs, but I was generally in poor shape what with my rice and coffee diet (listen, I’d like to see you eat full balanced meals while working twenty hours a week for ten bucks an hour, paying rent, bills, _and_ tuition).

I made it to the third floor finally, trying to catch my breath before entering the classroom. From the window in the door, I could tell my professor was getting prepared for the lesson, trying to get her powerpoint uploaded to the computer. I noticed that some of my classmates weren’t in. Maybe the flu was going around again? I wasn’t sure, but I got my flu shot in the fall and I was pretty sure that lasted for about a year. At least I wouldn’t get sick like I did the year before. I was lucky too; my professors could have decided to not let me turn in all my late work since I missed almost an entire week past the wellness center’s excuse.

Once I caught my breath, I walked into the classroom and into my usual seat towards the back of the class. I pulled out my recently charged laptop and opened up my folder for the class, making a new document for the day’s notes.

This professor was pretty chill about the attendance policy. As long as you showed up on the days she marked as very important and turned in the work, she’d let it slide if you missed a handful of classes throughout the semester. But even I noticed the concerned look in her eyes when she saw the number of students who hadn’t showed up that day.

“Is there an event I forgot about? Did I schedule class on a big day?” She asked, looking at her calendar. A few of the students, myself included, shrugged. I certainly didn’t know what was going on on this campus, so I was no help there.

The lesson went as it usually did, the professor pointing out some useful facts about the cardiovascular system that she unintentionally left out of the powerpoint. Did you know that it takes about six seconds for the blood in your body to go from the heart to your lungs and back?

With about fifteen minutes left of class, the professor looked at her phone and frowned. She was a new mother of twins and had a pretty loose policy on cell phones too, since she recognized that life exists outside of the classroom (as long as we weren’t douchebags about it, like not turning the phone on silent or at least vibrate).

“Okay guys, unfortunately I think Sybil and Sylvia are catching something. So, I’m gonna cancel the rest of class because I wanna be with my babies. I’ll email the next assignment once I get home.” She said as she packed her things. “Oh yeah, I think there are only a few slides left on this, but I can email it to you in you want the last few review slides for study purposes. What’s the next test?” She asked us, probably hoping we had been looking at the syllabus like good bananas.

“Thursday the seventh.” Several students murmured, sounding somewhat discordant with the difference in response times.

“Awesome, alright, I’ll see you guys later this week!” She waved at us and left the classroom.

A couple of students were ready to go; standing up out of their seats to make it to the next class in time to grab a good seat, or to grab a snack in between obligations. I didn’t have any more classes for the day, and my manager told me to take the day off. I don’t know why, because normally the restaurant is in a perpetual state of being short-staffed. However, I wasn’t going to question it because I could have used a break. I would probably regret it later, after having to take a double shift to make up for the lost hours, but that was a problem for future me.

Around the time I got out of class, someone hip-bumped me and took me out of my gaze. I looked to my side to see my friend Emily, with her rose gold tinted hair and flowy dress. Her dress made me think of butterflies.

“Hi, Em.”

“Hey, Dave. Did you professor cancel class too?” She asked.

“Yeah, she said her daughters might be catching something.”

“Oh no, I hope it isn’t anything serious.”

“Same.”

We walked out of the science building, the trees lining the sidewalks swayed with the breeze. It was a really nice day now that I had a little time to acknowledge it, the temperature wasn’t too warm or too chilly for spring. I was confused as to why my apartment was so warm this morning when the outside felt just fine. The buds of the trees were beginning to show some signs of subtle pinks and purples; they would probably bloom by the end of the week. As I was staring at the reviving vegetation, I realized something.

“Hey, Em, why did your professor cancel?” I asked.

She looked up from her phone; she had been keeping up with the new Marvel movies lately. It was looking like Endgame was going to have an unsatisfying ending due to poor writing and capitalism. The franchise was just that now, a product rather than a story. “Oh yeah, he was kind of cryptic about it. He just said that something happened at home and he needed to leave. We had like thirty minutes of class left too.”

“That’s really weird, because my English professor didn’t even show up this morning.”

“Maybe something’s going around? You got your flu shot, right?”

I nodded, I went and got one with Nana since we both needed moral support because for real, fuck needles.

Emily changed the subject then, asking me if I had eaten lunch yet.

Her words seemed to wake up my stomach; immediately demanding sustenance in the form of protein and vegetables. It growled loudly, and the chuckle that escaped her lowkey felt like a callout.

“Yeah, what are you thinking? I got some rice-”

“You are eating something other than rice, David.”

“Oh my god.”

“How about the salad bar? They rarely check if you’re using a meal swipe. I could even assemble a salad and bring it to you.”

“Thanks, Em, that’d be really nice.”

 

I didn’t realize how much my body craved real food until Emily laughed at how I was shoveling the greens into my mouth. It’s as if human bodies need vegetables to survive. She ate her salad like a normal human being, sipping from a glass of lemon water between a few bites.

I took a break from the salad to have some soup; I hadn’t been to the salad bar in so long that I forgot they had a rotating soup menu. That day, it was a sort of roasted corn and potato soup in vegetable broth. I started taking slower bites once I didn’t feel like my stomach was eating itself from the inside out.

“Did you see Nana earlier today?” Emily asked, picking out a cherry tomato and popping it into her mouth.

“I did, she was working on an essay for class while I charged my laptop in the library.”

“Good. Wait, is that good? I don’t know, I told her to go to bed after like one in the morning and she was still working on it. If she was working on it today, she probably did go to sleep.” Emily nodded and pulled out her phone.

“Or she read fanfiction for another hour.”

“You know what, that’s a big fucking mood.” Emily laughed. “Oh hey, Nana texted me. She asked if we could bring her something to snack on.”

“Are there oranges at the register? I know she really likes oranges.”

“Yeah, I’ll grab a couple for her.”

As Emily stood, I pulled out my phone too. My news app indicated that the cause of the power outage in north Harland hadn’t been determined yet, and authorities were worried how long residents would have to go without power. Something, something about this was weird. But I didn’t really acknowledge it. I didn’t have the spoons to, to be honest. I did hope that my side of town wouldn’t lose power too though, I needed to charge my phone to get updates from my manager, I needed to make a new batch of rice in the rice cooker. I also would have liked to have air conditioning at some point.

I looked out the window and saw the sky. Still overcast.

When Emily came back to the table, she slung her backpack over her shoulder. I took the oranges from her since she was also carrying her leftover salad. I demolished mine and the cup of soup, so I dealt with the cutlery and dishes.

Nana was already waiting for us outside of the salad bar, her headphones around her neck. She looked a little less stressed than she did this morning, which was pretty relieving to see. Her blue t-shirt had bits of paint on it from her job as a set builder for the local theater.

“What’s up sluts?” Nana waves at us with her characteristic grin. I hadn’t noticed it before, but her houndstooth backpack seemed bigger than usual. She must have brought her textbooks with her for that essay.

Emily and I approached her, Nana looked pretty happy for the oranges.

“Thank you guys so much, I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“God dammit, Nana.”

“In that case, why don’t you just go grab something from the noodle place down the street?” Emily asked, holding the other orange while Nana peeled the one in her hands.

“My uh, my Spotify payment went through so I have like twenty bucks to my name.”

“Fair enough.”

We walked towards the parking deck, like we did most days after classes. Emily and Nana both drove here since they both lived a little further away than I did. Nana popped an orange slice into her mouth and hummed in delight.

“God, I love oranges.”

“What are you guys up to tonight?” I asked.

Emily yawned, “I gotta catch up on some reading, I’ve been binging Runaways and fell behind in epidemiology.”

That wasn’t a bad idea, I was about two chapters behind as well. But also, I had very little energy to devote to reading. I learned best through lecture anyway. I would probably catch up during the weekend anyway, in a rush to somewhat understand what the next assignment would talk about.

“What about you, Nana?” I asked.

“Hmm, probably dick around on Twitter,” she took another slice of orange, “Probably read some fanfiction, have an existential crisis, stay up past my bedtime, and finally fall asleep about three hours before my alarm is supposed to go off.”

“Wanna come over and watch pirated Deadpool with permanent Korean subtitles?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Nana said as she finished the last of her orange. “Is that the one with Domino- wait, that’s Deadpool 2 isn’t it?”

“It is, though I could probably find it if I look hard enough.”

Emily laughed at us, “You naughty boy, Dave, pirating Deadpool 2.”

“Hey, I saw it like twice in the theaters, so I don’t feel bad.”

“Domino is so pretty, oh my god.” Nana said, still thinking about her one true love (not counting Ten from NCT, Peter Parker -platonically-, and Dan Reynolds).

 

We waved Emily off as she drove out of the parking deck, wishing her luck that she got caught up on her reading so she could start The Umbrella Academy before bed. She had a bit of a longer drive than Nana did, since she lived in Innsmouth about thirty miles north of Harland. Nana was only about fifteen minutes away from the campus by car, so if she hung out in my apartment, she could still get home at a reasonable time.

As the two of us piled into her car, Nana handed me her phone to play DJ. I played the new Spider-Man soundtrack, because we hadn’t gotten sick of it yet. We talked about our favorite fan theories about the next movie, especially about how excited Nana was to see her boy Miguel in the sequel. Somewhere along the line, we ended up talking about the proposal of a Deadpool 3.

“I just really want Deadpool to have a boyfriend named Peter, and when asked any more about him, the scene just abruptly changes.” I said, checking my phone when I get another notification.

“Not played by Tom Holland, right?”

“Oh God no, Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is a baby. I mean Andrew Garfield but with Tobey Maguire's age?.”

"Oh, but not Tobey Maguire's face?" Nana snorted.

I chuckled, reading the most recent update of the power situation in north Harland, the news sobering. “Oh shit, Harland is under a boil water advisory.”

“For real? What happened?”

“No one is sure, but people think it’s because of the outage.”

“Fuck, I hope we have power tonight at least, I need to charge my laptop and catch up on some responses to a few sonnets. I like Shakespeare, but the sonnets are driving me crazy.” Nana said as she parked in front of my apartment.

The inside of my apartment had cooled down considerably compared to how it felt this morning. Maintenance must have come in while I was in class. I was grateful, since Nana’s breathing problems were triggered by bad air circulation.

I flicked the light on in the living room, the curtains keeping out the light from the street lamps. The apartment, in all of its bare glory, was pretty welcoming most days. This was one of them.

“Man, this place doesn’t feel the same without Rose.”

I nodded, “Yeah, it’s been kind of a rough adjustment period. I can only imagine how hard it is for them.”

My roommate for the first three years of higher education, was Rose Triano. They were a math-physics major and a good friend. After a rough manic episode, they admitted themself to a hospital and stayed there for about a month and a half. Like how most institutions treat mental health, they weren’t allowed to catch up on their late work, which meant they failed that semester. They couldn’t afford school and the hospital bill at the same time, so they had to drop out, move from our apartment, and go back home. It was bad enough with the episode itself, but the way it was handled only made it worse for them.

Nana set her backpack down next to the little coffee table and stretched her arms up, like one did after a long day at work. “Hey, do you think Rose is busy tonight?”

“I don’t think they have a babysitting gig, we could ask.” I said and pulled out my cell phone. I set my backpack down next to Nana’s and pulled up our group chat.

 **Davepool:** heya rosie, what are you up to tonight?

 **NippleFucker420:** literally nothing.

 **NippleFucker420:** actually i may be getting stoned with my dad,,, do you need your handy dandy lesbian to open another jar for you?

 **Davepool:** that was ONCE

 **Davepool:** also nana and i wanted to know if you wanted to hang out

A few minutes passed by before I got another response. In the meantime, Nana opened up her laptop and logged into Crunchyroll. She was in the mood to finish up her most recent sports anime. I didn’t know a whole lot about it, but I knew she really liked it so I tried to pay attention. There were so many characters in it though, that I had a hard time keeping up with who was who. All I did know was that Abe and Ren were gay (probably not canon, but in the hearts of the fans, yes) and that Ren was adorable.

Eventually, I got a response. I had a feeling that Rose was probably pretty stoned and forgot to message back, as one does when stoned.

 **NippleFucker420:** idk man, maybe not tonight,,, i could come over tomorrow tho?

 **NippleFucker420:** what time you guys get out of class?

 **Davepool** : i think nana gets out at around three, i’m usually done by like seven depending on if my manager wants me to come in.

 **Davepool:** oh hey, i meant to ask; do you guys have power?

Some more radio silence for a few minutes. By now, they were probably making something for the munchies and making their way back to their bedroom. Nana is completely engrossed in the current episode; I wasn’t sure where the plot was going at this point. I was kind of spacing out the whole time. Something felt weird. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was probably some wicked foreshadowing, but things seemed especially weirder than normal. Harland rarely lost power. We weren’t exactly a big city, but we rarely had blackouts that have lasted for this long, and definitely without some big storm causing it.

Then there was the boil water advisory. Truth be told, that was a little more common than a blackout, but there was usually some prelude to it. Last time we were advised not to drink the tap water, was when the fire department was testing something, I didn’t remember what.

My phone buzzed, bringing me back to reality for just a moment.

 **NippleFucker420:** yeah, we’re using candles to get through the night, but we can’t even boil water without power cos all our shit is electric

 **NippleFucker420:** mom had to buy bottled water on her way home

 **Davepool:** shit that would have been a good idea… so see you tomorrow?

 **NippleFucker420:** if i can get a ride, hopefully

 **NippleFucker420:** we can catch up on pop team epic

I meant to text them back after that, I really did. But Nana and I got sucked into a discussion about the importance of men showing affection to each other, whether romantic or platonic. We needed more men who were not only emotionally mature, but men who were encouraged to be that.

Nana finally went to bed at around twelve-thirty that night, and I followed suit at around one in the morning. As I was falling asleep, listening to Nana’s soft snoring, looking at the patterns on my ceiling, I got that feeling again.

I had chronic anxiety, sure, but this was different. A part of me, a voice deep in my conscious, was telling me that this would be the last night I would sleep peacefully in a long time. I had a feeling in my gut that was saying I needed to be ready for something, I probably could never have prepared for.

 

Sometime in the night, maybe an hour after I had fallen asleep, I woke up with a dry mouth and itchy throat. I coughed in hopes that it would somewhat settle it until I felt like getting up, but it was becoming unbearable.

I rolled out of bed, accidentally taking some of the blanket with me, but Nana didn’t react much beyond changing position.

Stumbling into the kitchen, I grabbed a plastic cup from my cupboard and filled it up with some water. I took several big gulps, sighing after pulling the cup from my lips. That was much better.

After getting back in bed, Nana slurred some words at me that kind of sounded like, “What’s up?”

“Just got some water,” I said.

“Can I have some?”

I handed her my cup and she downed about half of it. After giving it back to me, she laid back down and fell asleep almost instantly.

I set the cup down next to the futon and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I don't know how many chapters this fic is gonna have. As you could tell, if you made it this far, this is only an exposition chapter so no zombie action here. I'm hoping to get shit rolling by the next chapter or so (also this chapter was a lil bit longer than I anticipated). Again, please comment and let me know if there's any weird plot holes that already exist, and other things, like if i forgot a tag. Also please comment and let me know if you like it, I need external validation ^.^'  
> Oh yeah, and feel free to follow my dear good friend on Twitter! Her handle is cryingpupusas! She posts a lot about NCT and she's just generally cool.


	2. Good Morning Harland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I meant to get this to you guys faster but effort. Also I think what I'm gonna do is provide a summary in the notes at the end, with the important points to take away from the chapter if the warnings I put up here are triggers for any readers. I have also added a few new tags for the story overall; I don't think most of them are triggers but read them anyway because I think I'm funny.  
> Oh yeah, I've decided that this won't be a retelling of the Raccoon City incident. You'll see what I mean later.  
> TW: Death, jokes about suicide, dark/gallows humor, humor to cope, trauma related to the authorities, paranoia, needles, discussion of zombies, water-related poisoning/ailment, car crashes (mentioned)

I rolled over in my bed, almost squishing Nana in the process. I had no idea what time it was, because I actually remembered to shut the curtains last night.

Nana grunted when I rolled into her, and pulled the blanket tighter around her. Sometime during the night, the second blanket got kicked off, so when she pulled the blanket, it uncovered me in the process. I groaned a quick apology, but Nana had probably not woken up in the first place.

I smacked my hand around the hardwood flooring to find my phone.

I turned on the screen, seeing that I had a bunch of news notifications. The new season of that one show must have dropped, and no matter how many times I tried to ignore it, it found its way into my feed eventually.

I ignored the notifications and checked the time. It was around seven in the morning. I looked behind me, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. The light around the curtains’ edges was grey, almost blue as though it were cloudy again.

I couldn’t go back to sleep, even if I only had about six hours. Instead of trying though, like normal people do, I opened one of my social media apps.

For a moment, one blissful moment that morning, everything was still normal. I would have gone to class later that day, gone to lunch, played video games, eat rice, gone about my fucking normal life like everyone else would have done that day.

But that wasn’t the case.

The headline for my local news app made my jaw drop. ‘Dozens dead in car crash on I-81’. How could that many people have died in a car crash? The article on the disaster had only just been added, so there wouldn’t be any updates for at least another half-hour. I remembered then, that our friend Emily drove down I-81 to get to the college, and she had morning classes on Wednesdays.

I opened the group chat my friends and I used; we started it in sophomore year when there was a snow storm and we wanted to make sure everyone was safe. More recently, it was used for sending memes, school reminders, and general discussion.

I typed a message, asking everyone to sound off. I especially tagged Emily in the message. She didn’t text while driving, but she would definitely see the message when she stopped.

Nana’s phone buzzed once the message was sent, since she was in the chat as well. The buzzing woke Nana up though, and she sits up as if the bed were on fire. The few times we slept in the same room told me that this was somewhat normal; especially since she had a tendency to sleep through her alarm on account of sleep deprivation.

“What is it, are we late?” She slurred as she rubbed her eyes.

“Not yet, we have a few hours. Er, I do, when’s your earliest class?”

“Ten-thirty.”

“Yeah, we got a few hours.”

“Aw shit man, can I go back to bed?”

“Not yet, there was a wreck on I-81.”

That certainly woke her up more, alertness coming across her features as she tried to decipher what I said in a sleep-addled mind. It took a few seconds, but she responded. “Is Emily okay, she takes that to get here.”

“Dunno, I just sent a message to the group chat asking for everyone to sound off.”

She grabbed her phone from the floor and looked at the group chat to see if anyone had responded yet. I watched her type something and a few seconds later my phone buzzed as well.

 **I got the spicy Flavaaaa:** i’m sittin here lookin at a fine piece of dave

I rolled my eyes and saw that Nana looked absolutely proud of herself.

My stomach rumbled, even though Nana and I ate maybe an hour before we went to sleep. I stumbled into the kitchen like a cave troll coming out of its hiding place after a long night of attacking the Fellowship. Wait a minute, the cave troll didn’t make it out of that. Whatever.

Sometime last night, during our anime marathon, I had made a pot of rice in the rice cooker. I saw that the lid was popped up slightly, leading me to believe that I may have left it there instead of putting it in the fridge.

I opened the cooker; I actually remembered the put away the rice. I didn’t remember to clean it out though, so I file that away to remember to do later (and then forget to do).

The fridge was as depressing as it usually was when I opened it, but the large container filled with rice was enough to brighten my morning. I pulled out the container and started to dole out a serving into two bowls. I couldn’t resort to muscle memory here, because I wasn’t sure if Nana liked sesame oil in hers. I placed one bowl in the microwave and let it heat up.

I scrolled through social media while I waited, trying to find anything about the crash. The news article hadn’t updated, but a lot of the people I followed in the area hadn’t said anything yet. It was probably too early for most of them to post anything, as most of them were other college students. No one would be up at seven-thirty voluntarily. Other than that, the rest of the feed was normal, memes, outrage towards the recent abortion bill and more. Personally, I think people shouldn’t make decisions they will never face the repercussions for. You know, stay the fuck out of someone’s business since it in no way will ever affect you?

I was about halfway through my inner monologue about how most of the “facts” that conservatives spew about abortion aren’t facts at all, just lies they spread to people who don’t have access to comprehensive, science based sex education when the microwave started beeping.

I took the bowl out and put in the other one to heat up. I put a little soy sauce into the bowl of warmed rice just as Nana waddled into the kitchen- you know, that waddle you do when you first wake up and your body is still a little stiff? She looked exactly like how someone does when they first wake up, eyes barely opened, almost- black hair messy and yet somehow still in its ponytail. She was wearing the same shirt she wore yesterday, but had changed into her sweat shorts before bed, her legs starting to get hair because who the hell had time to shave these days? She looked a little paler than usual, like she was getting sick. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she was getting sick. But I did, and knew that this was just part of the process. She would get pale towards the end of the semester, and then once school was out she would regain some of her color.

When did she get those shorts? I thought about it for a minute, but remembered that the last time she stayed the night, she had left them. She told me to not bother bringing them to her during class, since she would probably need them the next time she pulled an all nighter in my apartment (or passed out after an anime binge session).

I handed her the bowl of rice and she hummed as she took the first bite. “Breakfast of champions, gimme a mimosa and I’ll be set.”

I snorted and stopped the microwave right at one second and pulled my bowl out. I poured some soy sauce in it and looked around for the sesame oil. I looked over Nana and saw that it was still on the coffee table.

We sat at the little table for a bit while we ate, silent. It took both of us a moment to really wake up and become functional human beings, but sometimes sitting in silence was nice. There was something about being comfortable enough with someone to not have to fill it.

My phone buzzed right as I took the last bite of my rice.

 **I have the high ground:** hey, rose needed a ride

 **I have the high ground:** i’m bringing them to your apartment and going to class

 **Davepool:** wait i don’t recognize your handle, who dis?

 **I have the high ground:** sadie

 **Davepool:** who’s sadie?

 **I have the high ground:** fuck you

I looked to Nana, who was also finishing up her bowl of rice, “Sadie is gonna bring Rose to the apartment.”

“Does she know about the accident? Also did Emily respond to the chat yet?” Nana asked.

“Hmm, good questions.”

 **Davepool:** you may wanna take back roads to get here, it’ll be faster

 **Davepool:** and probs safer

Instead of tagging Emily in the group chat again, I sent her a message privately in hopes that maybe she’ll see it then. By now, she would normally be on campus, so she probably wasn’t driving then.

I set my phone down again and yawned, rubbing my eyes. If Sadie was on her way, she was probably about twenty minutes away. “Oh fuck.” I let my head hit the coffee table.

Nana looked up from her phone, “What?”

“I meant to do work last night.”

“Same,” Nana said, nodding with a smile on her face that said something like ‘guess I’ll die’.

I crawled to my backpack, because standing like a normal person sounded like it would have expended too much energy. I pulled the laptop out of my bag and pushed my bowl to the side of the table. With a defeated sigh, Nana followed suit.

After the hard work of getting the tabs open for the project, I felt parched again. My throat was a little dry, and I wanted water. The realization hits me then.

“Welp, we drank tap water last night.” I said. “That probably isn’t good.”

“What’s the worst that could happen? I shit more than I normally do?” Nana said, typing furiously on her keyboard. A moment passed, and music played from her laptop. NCT 127’s ‘Simon Says’ broke the silence.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to die of dysentery before I get my degree.” I sighed, plugging in data to my spreadsheet. It was a piece of the final project that was technically due the week before, but the professor extended the due date when it became known that only a few students had finished it on time. For a piece that wasn’t a large chunk of the grade, the work to finish it was tedious and I had already made a mistake in the coding of data. Emily probably already had the spreadsheet done, but I wasn’t going to ask her to do it for me. Also she was studying a different disease than me, that wouldn’t be super helpful.

After a few minutes of no response from Rose, Sadie, or Emily, I started to get antsy. I didn’t expect people to be glued to their cell phones and to respond to a text within five minutes, but I was worried. Nana had to tell me to chill out a few times before I decided to make myself some tea. I was probably catastrophizing. I remembered my therapist from high school telling me how to handle a situation like this. Acknowledge the thought, but let it pass by. Don’t dwell on it to the point of panic, because that can lead to spiraling, which is hard to recover from.

With my cup of hibiscus tea, I began working on my project again, but as I got into the groove of doing the work, I got a text.

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** dave i need a huge favor

 **Davepool:** what’s up, em?

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** i need to come to your apartment

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** i’m alive and okay but i really need to come over

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** please

“Oh shit, Nana, I think something’s wrong.” I said, but Emily was still texting.

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** i’m kind of freaking out and using voice to text i just kept driving, oh my god it was awful dave i thought i was having a nightmare, i think i am having a nightmare

I stopped texting immediately and dialed Emily’s number, putting it on speaker and in the middle of the table. Nana’s typing ceased, she was looking with a concerned face at my phone, like Emily would walk out of it.

It rang once, if that, before Emily picked up.

_“Hello?”_

“Hey, Em, what’s going on?” Nana asked.

 _“I don’t know, the interstate was fucking insane. There were so many bodies,”_ I heard a sob and a sniffle. _“I’m a few minutes away from your apartment, is it okay if I come over? I know it’s so sudden, but I don’t wanna go to class by myself.”_

“No man, don’t apologize. Listen, just drive safe and get here in one piece. Do you want to stay on the phone until you get here?” I asked, shaking my leg.

_“My phone might die, I forgot to bring my charger when I left the house. Is it okay if we stay on the phone?”_

“Yeah, yeah,” I looked up to Nana, “Call Sadie or Rose for a status update.”

“Good idea, I’m gonna tell them to avoid the interstate entirely, even if the drive is longer.” Nana said as she stood, going to the bedroom to make the call.

I heard Emily sniffle again and then take a deep breath. _“I think what was the most, like, unnerving was that even the paramedics were down. Like, the ambulances still had their sirens on but everyone was on the ground. I think I saw one of my classmates back there.”_

“How did you get through? Wasn’t it a pile-up?” I asked.

_“I drove past it on the emergency lane. I almost got out of the car but I wasn’t gonna be that dumb white girl in the horror movies.”_

“See? That’s smart, you’re already a step ahead of the game. You’re a virgin too, so you’ll survive to the end credits.”

 _“Shut the fuck up.”_ Emily said, but there was no venom in her voice. I heard a sad chuckle at the end of her sentence. Another sniffle.

Nana walked back into the living room, it was probably a short call. “Rose said that they’re taking Smiths Road here, it’s a straight shot to campus and all they gotta do is get to your apartment after that. Is Emily still on the phone?”

_“Hey Nana.”_

“Hey, Em. I overheard some of that, we virgins are gonna survive, aren’t we?”

 _“Oh my god.”_ Emily laughed, her voice sounding a little less shaky. Nana and I needed to make sure she didn’t freak out too hard, at least not until she was inside a safe space and rather than behind the wheel of a car.

“You almost here?” Nana asked.

_“Yeah, I see the complex now. I’ll be pulling in in a second.”_

“More like, _pulling out_.” Nana said, waiting for a response from me.

I grinned, but shook my head, “No, that was bad.”

“Pff, no one appreciates me in this family.”

_“I’m hanging up now since I’m so close. See you in a sec.”_

“See ya,” Nana and I said in unison as the call ended.

There was a pregnant pause. I knew something was wrong. Something was off. I didn’t know how everything was connected, but my mind was supplying all sorts of paranoid theories that were getting more and more over the top with each passing minute. What if something like this was why classes ended early, or why some professors and students didn’t show up at all? What if it was just a drunk driver at seven in the morning that caused such a tragedy? What if there was a horrible disease-

“Hey,” Nana patted my shoulder, “I see you spiraling already. It’s probably just a horrible accident. In a few days, we’ll be able to recover and get back to our lives.”

I nodded, trying to not panic. I needed to stay calm and collected, mass hysteria led to rash decisions with bad consequences. It didn’t help that when I looked through my news app, it was total darkness. One of the Kardashians had a new highlighter line. A singer was promoting a detox tea to get rid of stubborn belly fat from pregnancy. A politician said something -shocker- incredibly insensitive. Everything other than what was going on in Harland at the moment.

Maybe a minute later, there came a knock at the door. I sat up so fast to answer the door that I got dizzy, but Nana had it covered.

Emily was standing on my doorstep, her rose gold hair plaited into a side braid that rested over her collarbone. Her makeup was a little messy, probably from the crying. She must have had a presentation in one of her classes that day.

We ushered her inside quickly, giving her a pillow to sit on by the coffee table. Her face was a little red and her eyes looked tired, but she looked like she may have started calming down a bit.

I hurried into the kitchen to turn on the electric kettle again, but Emily said she didn’t want tea yet. “Just some water, please.”

“Uh, Em, the boil water-”

“I had cereal with dairy milk this morning, I’m gonna shit my brains out anyway.”

I nodded and filled up another plastic Walmart cup, bringing it to Emily, who takes a long gulp of it.

“Oh god,” she said, staring at the floor for a minute.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” I asked.

“It was, it was so weird, because I heard the sirens but nothing was happening. People were just driving by like it was an everyday thing, you know? Like there weren’t bodies _everywhere_. I thought I was losing it for a second, none of it felt real at all. I don’t think it even hit me until a few minutes after I drove past it.” She said, retelling what she had seen. “Most of them looked like they had thrown up blood or something. I don’t think even the fire department and police had gotten there yet.”

“Wait, it’s been like an hour since the news first reported it, aren’t they normally on top of that shit?” I asked.

“Usually, yeah. I don’t know what happened there,” She drank some water, “I still can’t get over the paramedics. They were down too, no one ever thinks that they’re at risk too.”

There was a silence, the tension in the room so thick you could cut it with a knife. I felt so bad for Emily. She was normally pretty strong, a level-headed person who was responsible. Yeah she had anxiety, but seeing bodies litter the ground wasn’t exactly an everyday thing. You could prepare for anxious thoughts, even a full on breakdown from a college workload. Driving past dead bodies and seeing no further response from the authorities? That wasn’t something you could prepare for.

Nana broke the silence finally, “Okay, fuck this shit, I’m not going to class today.”

Emily nodded, “I don’t think I can go to class either.”

“Well of course not, even if you wanted to, we would feel morally obligated to make you skip.” I chuckled,

“We’ll tie you to the bed frame.” Nana waggled her eyebrows.

“Not my kink,” Emily said, glancing my way.

“First of all, shut up. Second, I don’t even have a bed frame.”

Nana had wandered into my room, presumably to put on real pants. “I know you’re more creative than that, Dave.”

“Oh god, oh god, I am not talking about this right now. I am dryer than a desert.” I covered my face with my hands, my cheeks burning like I was actually on fire.

“That’s my line.” Nana said, emerging from my bedroom in her leggings. She was also wearing a different shirt, a shirt from her brother’s state university. She must have also left that in my apartment during a previous visit. It had become a given, I had left my jeans in her house, a pair of boxers, probably a work shirt. Emily had also left a sundress there by accident. It had become universal law at that point; we all had articles of clothing that traveled between residences. It made spontaneous sleepovers a lot easier.

“When did we last call Rose?” Nana asked as she sat cross-legged at the coffee table.

“”I think like fifteen minutes ago?” I responded.

“Time moves weird in fanfiction.”

“Anyway, they should be here soon. Sadie drives like a grandma, so we still have a bit.” Nana said, resting her chin in her hand. “I’m hungry, nothing stays with me these days.”

“I think there’s still some rice left, I could microwave some more.

“Dave, please tell me you have something other than rice. I’m gonna buy you some fucking vegetables.” Emily mumbled.

“You’re broke.”

“You’re gonna die of vitamin deficiency.”

“I’ll worry about dying after I get my degree.”

All of our phones buzzed or dinged at that moment. The entire group chat was addressed.

 **NippleFucker420:** hey you guys didn’t drink the water did you?

In some moments, it felt like the universe was playing a cruel joke on us. There were days when whatever created us; whether it was God, the Big Bang, Gaia, Brahma, or who knows, had plans for us that we had no control over.

Nana looked dead at me, “You gave me the water.”

“I was half asleep!” I held my hands up defensively, “I drank it too.”

“What’s next white man, smallpox blankets?” I could tell Nana was only half-kidding, but she had every right to be annoyed with me. I should have thought that through a little more, but I was still groggy when I did it. We had addressed it earlier, but we didn’t think it would be a big deal.

“Don’t feel bad, I drank some this morning when I first woke up, too.” Emily said, hand to forehead.

I knew I was going to regret asking this, but I did it anyway.

 **Davepool:** why do you ask?

 **NippleFucker420:** because my jackass dad didn’t know that water needed to boil

 **NippleFucker420:** because he didn't pay attention to the bright ass yellow paper on the dining table

“Oh my god, why are we all collectively disaster-prone?” Nana sighed.

“Or just walking disasters,” Emily said, dejected.

 **I got the spicy Flavaaaa:** you’re in good company

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** We have all had water at some point

 **NippleFucker420:** sadie wants to know if using not boiled water to swish after brushing teeth counts.

 **Davepool:** i mean? maybe?

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** It depends on what the contaminant is

 **I got the spicy Flavaaaa:** public health major coming in clutch

 **Hal is a bi disaster:** I think in some cases, if it’s just bacterial, you’ll be fine. If you’re really worried we can call poison control when you two get here

“Oh yeah, I forgot about poison control.” I said.

“Probably because none of us did that dumbass tide pod thing.” Emily retorted.

I was going to make a snarky response about why that whole thing was agitating, because previous generations already thought there was no hope for us, until someone started to knock frantically on my front door.

Nana and I both stood, though this time I made it to the door before her. Expecting it to be Sadie and Rose, I was ready to start singing ‘Welcome to My House’ when I noticed that it was not Sadie and Rose.

It took me a solid minute to recognize who was at my door, but once it hit me, I started to understand how serious this situation was.

Morgan and I shared a Psychology 101 class in our first year, I needed a gen ed requirement filled, and she was planning on pursuing psychology as a major. She was kind of shy, but was one of those people who had friends in all kinds of social circles. She was taller than me by a few inches and had bleached hair that kind of made me think of a Daenerys cosplayer in modern day clothes. Her eyes were red like she had been crying. Behind her, were two students I only somewhat recognized, Ewan and Wyatt. If I remembered correctly, they were education majors and her roommates.

“Dave, I’m so sorry, but you’re the only other student here I know and trust. We can’t go back in our apartment.”

“Uh, why?”

“Something happened to my boyfriend, I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he tried to attack us.”

That was all I needed to hear to let them into my apartment.

Nana and Emily looked at me in confusion as to why I just let three more people into the apartment. But I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I turned them away; I knew them and knew that they wouldn’t try to murder us at least. Hopefully.

As they walked into my apartment, I noticed that Ewan had a bandage on his left forearm.

“Uh, Dave?” Emily said. I turned to see her with a raised eyebrow and a pretty concerned look on her face. That was totally warranted; especially since I wasn’t sure if Nana and Emily knew these people. Nana may have known Ewan and Wyatt, since she was interested in education, but she probably didn’t know them very well.

“Guys, these are my neighbors, they go to our school.” I said.

“Did something happen?” Nana asked.

Ewan took his glasses off and started to clean them with his shirt, “Our roommate, Eli, just, I checked his pulse and he was dead. I mean, I’m not a doctor so I could have been wrong, but he _got up_.” He said, the look of horror on his face sent chills through me. He looked like how Emily did when she first entered my apartment. A little blood had seeped through the bandage.

“You mean he died and came back?” Emily asked in disbelief, because how could someone believe that?

“I don’t know what happened,” Morgan said. “We woke up this morning and he was fine, but then he started feeling sick. Wyatt and I were going to take him to the urgent care when he just, he-” She covered her mouth like she was going to cry again.

“At the risk of sounding absolutely nuts, he was like a zombie.” Wyatt finished for her. “He wouldn’t answer us, I don’t think he even knew who we were. I think in terms of consciousness, he was actually dead on his feet.”

After he said that, the apartment was silent again. There are some points when you hear something and you’re not sure if you really heard it right. But there it was, I had just heard Wyatt used the work ‘zombie’ seriously, and my grip on reality felt as though it was slipping.

“How is that possible?” Emily finally spoke up. “I drove by the wreck this morning, and none of the bodies were getting up. They were like, _dead_ dead.”

“I don’t know, I just know that’s the only logical explanation for what happened to Eli.” Wyatt held his hands up.

For a moment, I could hear everyone arguing about the use of that word, but all I heard was static. Everything faded out and I was somewhere else. Anywhere but my own apartment, a place I had come to know as home after a shitty twenty-two years of existence. I didn’t know what was coming, genuinely, for the first time in my life. Yeah, I lived in ambiguity normally. I impulsively applied to school -only one school- and got in. I packed my bags, flipped off my parents as I stumbled into a mediocre one bedroom apartment nearly two states away. I had at least a vague idea of what came next, even if I didn’t know how to get there.

And for the first time in over a decade, I felt like I had no control.

“Dave?” Nana patted my back, “Dave, are you with us?”

“I think it was the water.” I blurted.

“What?” Emily narrowed her eyes at me.

“I can’t think of anything else it could be. I mean, how else can you explain the bodies on the interstate? Don’t you think it’s a little strange that we got a boil water advisory yesterday and then a bunch of people died today?” I fiddled with my hands, feeling the nervous energy coursing through me.

“There was a boil water advisory?” Morgan’s jaw dropped.

“Yeah, they announced it on the local news app.” I responded.

“Oh god, _oh god_ ,” Morgan rubbed her temples, “We all had water this morning. All four of us. Oh fuck, are we gonna die-”

“ _Wait,_ wait, before we lose our collective shit,” Nana interrupted. “We aren’t sure that’s the exact cause. Dave, you always say that correlation isn’t causation or whatever. Let’s worry about the end of the world _after_ we know that for sure. I can’t explain what happened to your friend, but we need to remain rational for at least a little longer.”

There was a knock at the door, and Nana stood to answer it. “We’ll call poison control literally as soon as Sadie and Rose walk through that door.” She said and opened it.

Just like she said, Sadie and Rose walked through the door.

Sadie was barely five feet tall and yet held herself in with an attitude that said ‘if you shove me in a locker, I’ll gentle fist your face’ (which actually happened when she was in middle school, the bully was so embarrassed to say that she broke his nose with a move from Naruto that he lied and said it was from basketball practice). Her hair was pulled into pigtails that looked kind of like pom-poms on the top of her head. I affectionately called her ‘Meatball Head’ since she started getting into Sailor Moon with its kind of disappointing reboot. In all honesty, with her tattoo choker and jean jacket, she looked like the quintessential nineties grunge lesbian (particularly of her partner’s dreams).

Rose was significantly taller than Sadie, even though they were a few inches shorter than me. They were also wearing a jean jacket, only it had more patches on it than Sadie’s, but they both wore the Rebel Alliance patch. Rose also wore a patch reading “IPRE” from a podcast we both adored. There were a few other patches in their jacket, particularly a few pride patches. Their hair had grown out since I last saw them, the bleached blonde tips now reaching their jawline, but the undercut had grown a little too. While it would have looked disheveled on anyone else, Rose managed to pull it off.

The both of them shared a look that could have been interpreted as ‘What the hell did I just walk into?’

However, Sadie was the first to point it out. “So, did we miss the party memo?” She said, her nose wrinkling with her slight cringe.

“It’s a long story,” I started. “But-”

“Shit’s hitting the fan,” Emily said for me, which did sum up the day’s events so far. And it was barely noon. “Sit down, we’re gonna call poison control to see if we’re all gonna die.”

Sadie and Rose sat down next to the table, but Nana remained standing, as did Morgan, Wyatt, and Ewan.

(Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone else who knows better, just so you’re not lost, there are eight people in the room including myself. My best friends: Nana, Emily, Rose, and Sadie. My neighbors: Wyatt, Morgan, and Ewan. And then there’s me, Dave; don’t worry, I won’t start singing Lil’ Gideon’s _Lil’ Ol’ Me._ If you’re wondering how things are about to go from chaotic and stressful to just breathtakingly fucked, continue to the rest of this chapter.)

Emily looked up the number for poison control on Nana’s still opened laptop and dialed it. The five seconds of ringing was arguably the most tense five seconds of my life by that moment.

 _“Innsmouth and Harland Poison Control Center, how can I help you?”_ A woman’s voice came through the speaker. We all looked at each other, unsure of who should speak, until Emily took the reigns.

“Hello, my name is Emily James. I’m here with seven other people. We drank some water during a boil water advisory, and were wondering what the steps we’d need to take to ensure our health would be.” She bit her nails after speaking, she looked all nerves.

_“Okay, what are your ages?”_

“I’m twenty-four,” Ewan said, holding up his hand.

“I think the three of us are the youngest at twenty-one,” Nana said, pointing between herself, Sadie, and Rose.

“Between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-four.” Emily responded.

_“How much of the water did you ingest?”_

“Nana and I had about a cup’s worth.” I said.

“Same.” Rose responded. Morgan and Wyatt held their hands up as well.

“I had about two cups.” That was Ewan.

“I only washed my mouth out with some.” That was Sadie.

“One of us used some water to rinse her mouth out after brushing her teeth, the rest of us had between a cup and two cups.” Emily relayed our responses to the person on the other end.

_“Okay, thank you. Can you tell me any of the symptoms you may be experiencing? Headaches, nausea, muscle weakness, fatigue of any sort?”_

Emily looked up at us, but the general consensus was that we were all fine. Some of us looked to Ewan, seeing the bandage on his arm, but even he looked okay. A little stressed, yeah, but other than that he seemed in as good shape as any other college kid. “I’m good, just a bite.” He said.

 _“A bite? Did I hear something about a bite?”_ The responder asked.

Emily paused, “Um, yeah. Someone with us was bitten by a sick person.”

There was another pause, we could hear some shuffling over the line. A few muffled voices, but no one (at least I couldn’t) could make out what was being said. The voices sounded robotic in nature, almost like a doctor’s but like a doctor who gave zero shits about their patients. Finally, the woman came back on the line, but the tone of her voice changed.

_“What time did they receive the bite?”_

“Earlier this morning, maybe an hour ago.” Ewan said, and Emily repeated it into the receiver so the woman could hear.

_“Could you describe the symptoms being experienced?”_

Ewan shrugged, “Dude, I don’t fucking know. It hurts like someone tried to take a fucking chunk out of me.”

“Just the pain from the bite?” Emily asked. She relayed the information to the responder once he nodded.

There was another pause. More muffled, robotic voices came through the speaker. Then, it was silent. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed in the silence, but it was long enough that we began exchanging glances, wondering if the call dropped. Eventually, the woman came back again.

_“May I have your address? The information you give us will remain confidential.”_

“Uh,” I hummed, feeling odd about that. “Thirty-eight Spear Street, apartment one-oh-two. Harland, Vermont.” I said my address clearly so that the responder could hear me.

_“Thank you, we will be sending some specialists to your location to ensure your well being. Please expect them within the next ten to fifteen minutes.”_

Before any of us could respond to her statement, the call abruptly ended.

“I have a bad feeling about that,” I said.

“You have a bad feeling about everything,” Sadie snarked.

“Yeah, and I’m usually right.”

Ewan had paled a bit and Wyatt patted his shoulder, “What now?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Emily said. “I mean, she said they were sending specialists.”

“Yeah, but why would they worry about it so much if none of us are showing symptoms?” Ewan asked, his voice shaking.

“Maybe it’s like cold sores? Like, the herpes virus is there before the symptoms show.” Emily said, “This is probably just precaution.” I wanted to ask her what the precaution was for, but even she looked disbelieving of her own words.

Morgan wrung her hands, “So, do we just, wait?” She asked.

Wyatt ran his hand through his copper red hair, “I guess? I don’t like this, I have a horrible feeling in my stomach.”

That was a big mood, something we could all agree with at such a time.

“Oh great, I’m so excited to work with a doctor. They have such a great track record with black women.” Sade groaned, holding her hand to her forehead.

“You won’t be alone, is there anything you want us to do to support you through this?” Nana asked.

“I don’t know, I can’t think right now. I want to hear Liv’s voice.” She said and pulled out her cell phone. She walked into the kitchen for the minimal privacy it could offer.

That cued others to call parents and other loved ones. Nana called her mom and brother. Emily called her parents and older brother. Rose called their mom. Wyatt, Morgan, and Ewan pulled out their cell phones but I didn’t know who they were calling.

I didn’t know who to call. I wasn’t really on speaking terms with my parents after the whole coming out ordeal. My biological father was out of the question, he somehow reacted worse than my mother and step-father. There really wasn’t anything more depressing than not having someone to call at a time like this.

Well, almost.

Taking a chance, I opened a private chat that only just recently started being used again. My cousin and I grew up like siblings, but things got kind of tense and we needed to take a break. We were only just starting to get to speaking terms, and I was unsure if she wanted to hear this. I sent her a message. She had her own life, busy since she had just gotten a new job, so I was surprised that she responded almost immediately.

 **Davepool:** hey man

 **Davepool:** i know things have been weird for a while, but i just wanted to let you know

 **Davepool:** something scary is happening here and i don’t know what’s going on

 **Novatious** : Dave, are you in trouble?

 **Davepool:** maybe? it’s a long story, but we had to call poison control. can you do me a favor?

 **Novatious:** Yeah

 **Davepool:** keep an eye on Harland. for real, look at any news that comes up

 **Davepool:** anything, even tweets or selfies or whatever dumb shit

 **Novatious:** I mean, sure?

 **Novatious:** You do realize that I am in a whole ass different region, right?

 **Davepool:** i know, but shit’s getting real. i request that you avenge me

 **Davepool:** i don’t know if it’s real, but something is making people really sick

 **Davepool:** promise?

 **Novatious:** Okay

 **Novatious:** You’re kind of freaking me out, why are you being so cryptic?

 **Davepool:** because i don’t know if i’m being paranoid or if i’m right

 **Novatious:** Bruh just tell me

 **Davepool:** someone said zombies, someone said people are dying, and i’m kind of freaking out

The banging on the front door took me out of my hurried typing. We all paused, unsure if it was smart to just open the door. Morgan moved to open it, but I stopped her.

 **Davepool:** E, someone’s at the door

 **Davepool:** they acted weird on the phone but we called poison control

I didn’t see her last two messages, but something told me she was telling me to not answer the door. I kind of felt like pulling a Scott Pilgrim, and just leaping through a window to safety. Why did I feel like this? They were supposed to help us, right?

Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the door, deadbolt and all.

I heard birds singing, the sun wasn’t shining, but it wasn’t more overcast than the day before. I hadn’t put my sunglasses on, so it was still somewhat hard to see. Two people stood on my doorstep. One man, who was pushing six feet tall and slim, and another who was maybe an inch or so taller than me, but looked like Gaston from _Beauty and the Beast_ in terms of bulk. Behind them, a woman with blonde hair pulled into a bun stood, adorned in scrubs. The men were dressed in black suits, and looked generally unpleasant, like they had no sense of humor even if you let out a zinger. These were not boys you could crack open some cold ones with.

“Is this the home of Di-”

“Dave Russo,” I interrupted him before the tall one could say the wrong name.

The men narrowed their eyes at me and exchanged a look. Finally, the shorter one spoke. “We received notification that you called poison control, there are others in your apartment, correct?”

I nodded, figured they’d be able to see just fine behind me. Behind them though, I noticed something that made my stomach drop. There were three white vans in the parking lot and more people standing around them. Only one other was dressed in scrubs, and the others wore suits similar to the men on my doorstep. On the vans was a symbol I hoped to never see. It was octagonal, and looked like a parasol, white and red alternating. Umbrella.

No one knew for sure, but some of us believed, truly believed, that they were responsible for the nuclear reactor meltdown in the late nineties. So many people died because they couldn’t evacuate in time and it was the massive corporation’s fault. Sure, an accident was an accident, but negligent homicide was different. I didn’t feel even remotely safe about the fact that they were the responders.

Wait a minute. Those weren’t ambulances.

“ _Dave_ Russo, may we come in?” The woman in the back asked, her voice sounding clinical and cold.

“Um, actually, I don’t know if I should do that.” I said, beginning to close the door.

The tall man slammed his hand into the door, keeping it opened. “I’m afraid we can’t do that, we need to take some vitals and run some tests.”

The energy of the room changed so fast that I really didn’t know how to read it. Emily was behind me in a second, but it didn’t do much. Everyone else backed away as the threatening aura filled my living room.

“Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.” The shorter man said.

“I think the fuck not bit-” A stinging sensation cut me off, and I finally registered the injector gun held against my neck. I was going to say something else, probably angry and sarcastic but I couldn’t find my words. I couldn’t formulate a coherent thought. Everything around me was spinning and the needle was pulled from my neck. I tried to use the door to stabilize myself, but I collapsed to the floor like my limbs were made of jelly.

Though my ears were ringing and everything I heard was tinny, I could tell that Emily was screaming, trying to pull me up. Nana was in full blown panic mode, screaming something I couldn’t comprehend. Sadie was grunting like she was hitting something. Morgan and Rose were sobbing and crying for help. Ewan and Wyatt, I couldn’t hear anymore, but I heard something that sounded like a few blows landing and shouts of pain.

I tried to say something, anything, but my words were slurring. I thought I was trying to tell the others to run. Run for their lives. Emily dropped me and I saw someone step over me, though my vision was mostly static at that point.

As the chaos continued around me, I felt myself slowly succumbing to whatever they shot me with.

Was I dying? Was this death?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said the last chapter was way longer than I intended? Yeah, the same happened here. I just kept writing but I felt that breaking the chapter into two would have messed with the flow. Again, let me know what I've missed in terms of typos and if something doesn't feel like it's been intentionally left out, and you're lost on something, also let me know so that I can fill the gaps.  
> Also! If you had to skip the chapter, here is a summary:  
> Dave and Nana wake up to a news article saying a massive pile-up happened on an interstate that Emily uses to get to campus. Emily sees the dozens of dead bodies, freaks out and goes to Dave's apartment instead. Dave's neighbors, Morgan, Ewan, and Wyatt come into Dave's apartment because their fourth roommate died and came back, biting Ewan.  
> Everyone panics because they realize they all have ingested the water. Sadie and Rose come to Dave's apartment soon after, and they decide to call Poison Control. The call was weird and stressed them all out, but Dave gives the responder his address so they can send ambulances as a precaution. Mild panic ensues, Dave texts a friend while everyone is calling their loved ones, telling E or "Novatious" to keep an eye on any news about Harland. Eventually, what everyone initially thinks as "Poison Control", comes to the apartment. Dave notices the Umbrella symbol on the parked white vans in front of his building and decides that he doesn't want them to come into the apartment. He gets stabbed with a needle containing some form of tranquilizer and passes out as all hell breaks lose around him.


	3. DAVE. RISE UP.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, many things happened, like I fucking graduated and then my fucking face exploded and I had to get two root canals. Great, right?  
> So, true to my word, here are the triggers for this chapter and below will be a short summary so if you had to skip this one, you can stay on top of the story if you want to continue reading it.  
> Transphobia and blatant misgendering, medical related trauma, forced sedation, graphic description of violence, graphic description of decomposition, mentioned character death, body horror, emetophobia, graphic description of foul smell, anxiety/panicked spiraling, government-induced isolation, zombies, I used the word 'fuck' 22 times in this chapter. Also subtle fourth wall breaks.

My brain felt fuzzy, not like I was stoned but like I was in between being asleep and being awake. But this didn’t feel like waking up normally. The more I thought about it, the more I recognized the feeling as something similar to what I felt when I had my wisdom teeth removed. Normal anesthesia didn’t work on me, something about being a natural redhead, so I had to be given something stronger to go under for the surgery. I remembered still though, that I was semi-conscious for part of it. That’s what I felt like. I was sedated, but whoever sedated me probably didn’t know my tolerance.

_ I was sedated. _

I wasn’t in complete control of my body; my limbs felt like they were filled with lead and I couldn’t open my eyes. I wanted to roll off of whatever I was lying on and demand to know just what the fuck was going on, but I had to push that urge down. If I couldn’t move my limbs entirely, rolling off of this would probably hurt and I wouldn’t be able to get back up.

Time felt weird in that space. Was I really awake? Was I dreaming? How long had I been conscious? How long had I been  _ unconscious _ ? Where was everyone else? Where was I? What was I lying on and why was it so bright-

I heard what sounded like a door opening on a spaceship, and for a brief moment, I thought that I had been abducted by aliens. Wait, what the fuck? No, I couldn’t have been abducted by aliens. If intelligent aliens existed, they had damn good reason to avoid Earth entirely.

Footsteps were approaching me and I wanted to scream, thrash, get the fuck out but my body wasn’t responding. Was I entirely out of my body? Was I dead?

Umbrella.

My memory was crawling back to me, though there were still large gaps. The needle, Emily and Rose screaming, gloved hands lifting me from a stretcher onto whatever it was I was currently on. Why was I here? What brought me here?

The footsteps stopped pretty close to me, like I had been their main focus. While the light had been somewhat a pain before, it suddenly became unbearable. I heard squeaking like a lamp had been positioned over me. I grunted in pain and felt tears forming.

I heard the door open a second time, and a man’s voice echoed in whatever room I was in. “Status?” He asked.

“The subject is starting to wake up.” I heard another man’s voice, deeper than the first. 

“What are we looking at here?”

Did that motherfucker just call me a ‘what’?

“There were two identification cards in the wallet. One named ‘Diana Russo’ and the other ‘David Russo’, the second one was issued more recently.” Deep voice said.

“Is there anything else you’d like to share?” The first voice asked with a hint of annoyance. 

“Subject appears to be female, based on her blood work I would suggest she’s on some sort of antidepressant-”

I couldn’t stop myself. There were times when I didn’t think before I speak, even times when I could barely speak. It had led to a number of ass-beatings in childhood when my stepfather said something that I felt was either incorrect or just plain unfair, and led several teachers to have to issue punishments when I pointed out a fault in their logic. It wasn’t that I was smarter than them, because I wasn’t. It was because adults were frequently unfair to kids, especially kids like me.

The first time I tried to speak, my voice was raspy, and I couldn’t get out a syllable.

“She’s trying to speak, sir.”

“Well, Willits, what is she trying to say?” The man in the lighter voice asked with irritation in his tone. This guy must be in charge, I thought.

“I use he-him pronouns, you absolute buffoons.” I rasped.

I finally tried to open my eyes, and the light hurt, oh god it hurt so much but it was worth it to see the vague outline of someone’s face. I heard a snort, like one was trying to not laugh, but the expression on the other was one of murder. 

I had to close my eyes again; tears leaking down the side of my face. I couldn’t look at the light again, my head hurt so much.

Footsteps were walking away from me, and I heard the authoritative voice echo in the space. “Sedate her again. We don’t have much time for the tests, and keep her sedated. Or don’t, I don’t particularly care.”

The door closed. I wasn’t sure who was in the room with me, but if I had to guess, it was just me and Mr. Deep Voice. I heard a sigh and some footsteps around me. I had no idea what he was doing, and I felt the fear rising within me. I had no control of it and I can’t stand that, I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate-

I began to feel tired again and I slowly realized that I was having a hard time with words, even thinking them. Thoughts were a jumbled mess as I started to slip into the darkness once more.

As I faded in and out, I thought I heard the deep voice mumble an apology, but I wasn’t sure.

I was out again.

 

When I did wake again, I thought I was dying.

It hurt so much, I was convinced that they had set me on fucking fire. I could barely move within my restraints and I howled, I screamed because it was the only thing I could do about it. One time I was removing makeup with wipes that were marketed to people with sensitive skin and I was left with what felt like a chemical burn. It felt like that, but inside my veins and amplified by a hundred. A thousand.

I felt something slap down on my mouth, hard. It could have been a hand, but I was a little busy feeling like I was being dragged through hot coals to be sure.

There were voices again. For a moment, I thought that maybe I had died and was in hell, hearing discordant voices from demons and other poor bastards like me.

Slowly, I was able to hear more clearly. It was the two voices from before, talking like my pain meant nothing to them. It probably didn’t. I was learning quickly to expect the worst from these two. I didn’t know if still being alive brought me comfort or not.

“... blood work indicates that the cells aren’t dying like in other subjects. With one dead already, we should tread carefully with the plan.”

Dead? No, no, no, who’s dead? Dear god please don’t let it be Emily. Or Nana. Or Sadie. Or Rose. Anyone please just let it be someone who I don’t know at all.

Oh god, how could I have thought something like that? I was a monster. Someone was dead.

“Status on Russo?”

“She’s taking to the mod-virus as well as other subjects. Based on the results of the most recent blood test, I’d say she, James, Martinez, and Green are going to show the most successful results.”

Emily, Nana, and Sadie. Did that mean they were still alive?

“Good, good. We’re making progress with those four at least.”

Burning alive is what progress feels like? I wanted to kick his ass (even though I would lose because the last fight I was in was when I was twelve, because a boy kept pulling my ponytail).

“Willits, I’m tasking you with disposing of Lopez’s body. Check Triano and White when you’re done, I want to pay special attention to the Apocalypse program.”

“Yes sir.”

Like the time before, I heard footsteps fading away and a door closing after.

_ Apocalypse program _ ? I didn’t like the sound of that. I was trying to figure out who Lopez was, either Ewan or Wyatt. White was Morgan’s last name, and Triano Rose’s. Was I going to die too? The other man said I was making progress, but towards what? And what the fuck was the mod-virus? Was that what killed people on the interstate? A virus?

I couldn’t think much more after that, the pain was becoming unbearable. I would have done anything,  _ anything _ to make it stop. I thought about digging a scalpel into my arms and ripping the veins out, bashing my head into a wall to stop the pain, stop everything. But I was strapped down and couldn’t move much anyway. I hardly had any room for my uncontrollable writhing as is.

I forgot that there was a hand on my mouth until it was removed. Begging, crying, screaming, none of it did anything to stop it. My freedom of noise making was taken again by a gag of sorts.

My only reprieve was when I felt everything fade again. I wondered if someone had upped the sedative. My body was too tired to thrash and jolt and before I knew it, I had gone out again.

It continued for what felt like hours, days even. I would wake up in pain, shrieking for it to stop, begging for mercy, and then I would pass out. Logically speaking, the cycle may have repeated only a few more times but I was convinced that it happened over, and over, and over, and over again until I didn’t know what was real or not. 

Bits and pieces of information would come in those moments of clarity, if it could be called clarity. White, or Morgan, didn’t make it. She died during the third or fourth cycle of my waking up and going out again. I wasn’t sure who Armstrong was, but he was excelling at a rate they couldn’t imagine, the mutations only barely under their control. I heard about Armstrong during the fifth cycle. Rose was yo-yoing between doing well and crashing; something about the way neurotransmitters work (or don’t work) with bipolar disorder affecting how their brain reacted to whatever bullshit they were being injected with. I wondered if that would happen to me, in those brief moments that I could think straight. My guess was that I was being treated for my depression, where Rose didn’t have access to consistent treatment.

Nana and Emily were at what was referred to as an average progression of mutation, but Sadie was soaring past expectations. It was less than Armstrong’s rate, but she was reaching a point where she could reach instability.

I didn’t know exactly what was happening with me; other than I was maintaining a rate of mutation. I didn’t know what a mutation was for that, and I didn’t get a lot of information because when the two voices would start talking about my ‘progress’, the twilight sleep would wear off alongside the anesthesia and I would be in too much pain to understand anything external. When I was a kid, I learned pretty quickly how to remove myself from certain situations; a coping mechanism that began happening without prelude eventually. I couldn’t do that there; I would try but the pain would keep me from detaching. Keep me from being anywhere else but on that table.

I thought I would die there.

 

When I woke up, breaking what would have been the sixth cycle, everything was quiet. Usually when I woke up, I could hear the whirring of machines, the beeping of the electrocardiogram monitoring my heartbeat, footsteps, the researchers’ breathing, someone asking whose turn it was to make coffee. But there was nothing.

I could barely open my eyes still, but when I instinctively moved to cover my eyes, nothing stopped my right hand. I actually almost slapped my own face trying to shield myself from the light.

Looking down, my hand was free, unbuckled from its restraint.

I reached up with my free hand and unfastened the loose belt around my neck, stumbling through the first few tries. When I could finally move my head, I saw through irritated, teary eyes that I was in an empty room. I remembered my initial thought, that I had been abducted by aliens. If I hadn’t known better, that would have been a reasonable assumption. The room I was in was hexagonal, with white tiled walls, save for a single wall that looked like a mirror. I thought of all the ridiculous cop shows with a mirror in the interrogation room. Were they watching me?

“What the fuck?” I croaked out.

The next buckle was across my chest, and once I had a little more range of motion, I freed my left hand. I moved forward to undo the straps across my thighs and feet, but I was obstructed by something attached to my left hand.

I didn’t notice the tube attached to my hand. It was a common misconception that the needle was left behind when an IV was administered (all of those hospital-based soap operas didn’t prepare me for a pre-med track). It wasn’t, the needle is removed and a small tube is left in the vein, to give whatever the patient needed. 

I wondered if what put me through agony came through this tube.

I carefully removed the IV, the irritation of it nothing compared to what I felt before. Checking around to make sure I wasn’t attached to anything else, I finally reached down to release my lower body from the gurney.

As I completely freed myself, I noticed that I wasn’t on a gurney, but on something more akin to a hospital bed that was more stable. That was probably why I didn’t overturn it while thrashing and writhing in horrible pain.

My body felt stiff like I had woken up from a fever-induced coma. A sheen of sweat covered my body and I felt pretty disgusting. I heard several joints pop when I peeled myself off of the bed and stood upright on solid ground. My steps were short, kind of like when you first wake up from a long night’s sleep. Only it wasn’t, it was several rounds of what felt like agonizing rounds of torture.

I approached a table in one of the corners of this oddly-shaped room. My clothes were in a sealed plastic bag; my phone was in a tray similar to the ones placed before metal detectors. I had no shoes; I was still in sweatpants and an old graphic t-shirt when Umbrella took us.

Us.

I felt a ton of rocks topple in my stomach because I remembered then that I wasn’t alone in whatever they took me to. Racking my brain, I made a mental list of who had to be still alive, based on what little information I gathered during those cycles. Nana, Sadie, and Emily were alive last I heard. Morgan died. Either Wyatt or Ewan died. Rose was said to be in trouble; unstable or something. 

I rubbed my arms, my skin prickling at the warmth from my hands. I was wearing a thin paper sheet over my front, covering even my chest.

Ripping off the sheet with little care; I reached for the plastic bag with my clothes and began to dress myself. My top surgery scars were pretty fucking noticeable and they still managed to find a way to view my nipples as too scandalous.

I had never been so grateful for socks, even in an apartment without carpet, until I had put them on. I felt a little more comfortable once I was wearing clothing; at least I was covering my body on my terms.

The room I was in was a little bigger than my bedroom, or maybe a lot bigger; I couldn’t tell with it’s odd shape (it was really octagonal, I noticed when I was more coherent). The mirror on one wall, spanning from corner to corner caught my eye. Having first saw it when I woke up, I didn’t think of it until I realized that was how they monitored me between friendly visits of the two voices. Fear crept up my spine at the thought; were they still watching me? Was this part of their research? Their experimentation on me? I hadn’t felt so violated in such a long time.

After what felt like ages, nothing happened. Maybe I woke up during a lunch break and they were going to sedate me again when they got back, or what if they would kill me?

Stop catastrophizing. You won’t get anywhere if you keep doing that.

I pushed the thought away and went back to the table.

My phone was still there. I wasn’t sure why I bothered, but it didn’t hurt to look. 

I had several new messages; a few from my cousin, an advertisement text which was probably a scam, a news notification that the new live-action Disney film was less than satisfying for millenials.

What really caught my eye though, was the group chat. Emily was active ten minutes ago. I looked at the time and ten minutes ago was seven thirty in the evening. It had been about eight hours since we were first abducted.

Two walls away from the mirror, was a door, the only entrance to my room. It was imposing, with its bolts and keypad and tiny window; the door made me think of a futuristic dungeon one. Sci-fi dungeons and dragons prison.

Phone in hand, I approached it. The keypad had a screen that reminded me of the card readers on vending machines. The message “INPUT PIN” flashed on the screen. There was also the card reader part itself; wherever I was had to be serious business if just my room required not one but two security measures.

I paced for a few minutes; unsure of what to do. I was awake, which was great and all but I still had the problem of being stuck in the room. As I paced, I dicked around with the equipment I had been attached to previously. The equipment was alarmingly advanced, better than the machines you would find in the most well-funded private hospitals in the country where war criminals like Dick Cheney could get like-new hearts with a snap of their fingers.

The mirror was also a piece for examining; if I looked hard enough, I either could see or could trick myself into seeing a surveillance room where strangers watched me suffer.

When looking at the mirror, I finally got a good glimpse of myself and I did not like what I saw. I was horribly pale, somehow more than normal. Not just sickly, but deathly. Dark, bulging veins trailed from my blue hairline and inward, fading about halfway down my forehead. The same from my side hairlines. Veins trailed up my neck and faded near my jawline. I looked at my arms, seeing the veins in my hand run with black ooze that disappeared near my elbow. 

It had been a mutation; a result of the experimentation. I pulled up my shirt, expecting to see incisions where they dissected me and put me back together but the only marks on my body were around my chest. Nothing that hadn’t been there before. Maybe they hadn’t gotten there yet.

It was odd that nothing continued to happen as I paced my room. I was certain that by then, white suits would burst in and stick me with more needles and do their horrible poking and prodding and doing whatever the fuck with their ‘Apocalypse program’ that involved me and my friends.  _ Apocalypse Program _ . That was the most generic evil mastermind plan I had ever heard in my life and I played almost every game from the  _ Silent Evil  _ franchise; even the bad ones.

Eventually the pacing began to drive me mad and I checked the group chat again. Emily was active seven minutes ago. But then Sadie was active currently.

I figured, why the hell not?

**Davepool:** any chance someone or all of you are alive?

**Davepool:** please, someone be alive?

There was an immediate response.

**Hal is a bi disaster:** Oh thank god, I thought I was the only one left

**I have the high ground:** I’m here too

**I have the high ground:** Was anyone else fucking out for eight hours but somehow feels like they’ve been up for days?

**Davepool:** i think that’s what rose’s insomnia is like

**Davepool:** also i don’t know about you guys but i was fucking awake for some of it and it was fucking awful

**Davepool:** -10/10 would not recommend.

**Hal is a bi disaster:** I woke up once, and all I remember from that was pain

**Hal is a bi disaster:** You were awake for some of it???

**Hal is a bi disaster:** I’m so sorry Dave

**Davepool:** it is what it is

**Davepool:** tho for the record it was 1000x worse than waking up during my wisdom teeth removal

**I have the high ground:** oh shit you’re still in your room

**I have the high ground:** can you look out the window on your door and tell me if you see something that could lead me there?

**Davepool:** you got out??

**Hal is a bi disaster:** Wait you’re out?!

**I have the high ground:** i know this is a serious situation but i am a little offended that you’re both surprised

**I have the high ground:** have some faith in me guys

I left the group chat momentarily to do what Sadie asked me to do. On the tip of my toes, I could see out that narrow window. It wasn’t much, but I could see a door across from mine. The number next to it was 3112, and the door itself had a large sign on it that read ‘AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY’. There was no narrow window on it, but had a card reader and keypad. Not only that, but it had a touchscreen panel with the outline of a hand. Something in there required some serious security measures; more so than mine.

**Davepool:** alright sadie, i couldn’t see much but I could see that the door across from mine was numbered 3112

**Davepool:** it has a big sign on it about authorized personnel and no window, and a bunch of security shit next to it

**Davepool:** like a card reader, a keypad, and i think i fingerprint or handprint scanner

**Davepool:** hey wait, how did you get out? i highly doubt this is an open high school campus, are they just letting you walk around?

**I have the high ground:** it’s empty

**I have the high ground:** like deserted

**I have the high ground:** to give you a heads up though, the people that are still around were…

**I have the high ground:** let’s say it isn’t a pretty sight

**I have the high ground:** by the way i was just there so i’ll be a few minutes

I let my phone down and stared outside the narrow window again. I didn’t know what Sadie meant by the sight not being pretty, but I could guess. I remembered the clockwork schedule of the voices that spoke over me; if whatever I was in was deserted, something big had driven them out.

My mind wandered to everything that led to this; Emily’s drive that morning, drinking the water, Ewan’s bite wound. None of this could be good. The fact that I didn’t know where we were at all made it worse.

An amount of time passed by, I wasn’t sure because I wasn’t looking at my phone, the only device that displayed time in my room. I continued pacing, finding myself jittering with unwanted anxious energy that was only amplified by being cooped up in the room. So anxious and cooped up in my own head as well, that when I heard a knock on the door I nearly leapt out of my skin, choking on an attempted calming breath. My phone dinged.

**I have the high ground:** hey i’m here

**I have the high ground:** tbh i feel weird yelling at you through the door so i’m gonna text you the instructions

**I have the high ground:** in your room you probably have needles or long, thin, stable things

**I have the high ground:** grab something and poke around your card reader

**Davepool:** what about the keypad?

**I have the high ground:** it won’t matter

I shrugged and followed her instructions. I had a hard time finding a needle, but I eventually found something that would do; it was thicker than the one used to insert my IV. Probably used for drawing blood, since those suckers had to be thick.

Padding to my door again, I almost started fiddling around with the card reader when I stopped to ask Sadie for clarification.

**Davepool:** hey, define “poke around”

**I have the high ground:** oh yeah

**I have the high ground:** slide it along the thingy where the card is actually read

**I have the high ground:** there’s some sort of back door mechanism in case someone loses their card and forgets their pin

**Davepool:** i feel like that’s extremely convenient

**I have the high ground:** right?

The card reader looked a lot like the ones you’d find in a store but with fancier pieces. Sleek silver instead of hard plastic, clean and easily visible buttons for typing a pin instead of guessing on a well-used indie store’s keypad.

Carefully holding the needle into the reader, I began feeling around for whatever mechanism Sadie was referring to. Something felt jagged, or maybe that was the needle I was using. I was about to give up and ask Sadie if there was anything she could do on her end when I heard a clicking noise in the device, making it chime. It startled me and I dropped the needle, afraid that I had broken it.

The screen above the keypad read ‘PIN ACCEPTED’ and a light flashed green.

It felt as though the door opened in slow motion, but once it was open entirely, I felt a combination of relieved and terrified of what could happen next.

Sadie was leaning against the wall across from my door, and she looked like how I felt. Her skin had a grey-ish tone to it and the bags under her eyes seemed more pronounced than ever. Her pom-pom pigtails had been traded for a single bun atop her head, leading me to believe that a hair tie probably snapped on her. I could see the veins on her as well, similar to my own.

“You too?” She asked.

I nodded, “Yeah.”

Sadie sighed, “Well, let’s try to find the others. If any of them are still alive.”

“I remember, barely, hearing the voices talk about the others. If nothing’s changed, Rose and Nana should be okay. We just need to get them out.” I said.

We began walking down the hallway, and I felt more than unsettled about it. There were no windows, which made me wonder if we were underground. The walls were white and pale blue, but I could only determine the color in my hallway. Turning right from my room took you down to the end of the hallway, only two more doors remaining: an office and a janitor’s closet. Other than that, it was a dead end.

I didn’t understand why Sadie said it wasn’t a pretty sight until we turned left from my room, approaching the four-way intersection.

The massive Umbrella emblem painted on the tile flooring was spattered with blood, trailing down the hall directly across from mine until it stopped at a mauled body. It wore a white lab coat, slick black professional shoes and white dress pants. Above the waist was impossible to tell, the upper body was nearly unrecognizable; missing an arm and half of the skin on its face. I remembered the pain I was forced to endure and I felt only a little sympathy, even as I doubled over for my stomach to eject what little substance was in it.

Sadie patted my back as I vomited, giving me a napkin once I stood up straight.

“Believe me, you’ll see more of those.” She said.

I groaned and wiped my mouth, “Where did you get this anyway?” I asked.

“There’s a break room or something on my hall. I had a similar reaction when I first saw that.” She waved at me to follow her. We didn’t go down the hall with the body, but instead down the one to the right of mine. It looked similar to mine, several doors on either side but a dead end.

One door was propped open, fluorescent light pouring from the room. I assumed this was the break room Sadie mentioned. I felt calm as we walked in, like nothing bad could happen in this room. She motioned for me to sit down on a chair, “There are protein bars in that basket, I’m gonna go get Emily out.”

“Wait, I’m not staying here.”

“Dude, you haven’t eaten since before like ten, you’re gonna feel a lot better when you get something in your body.”

“What about the body outside? Whatever did that could still be wandering around.”

Sadie shrugged, “I’ve been walking around here for at least an hour now; nothing has happened. Whatever did happen, left.” She started to walk out of the break room, but turned to look at me again, “Eat, seriously.”

She made a left turn down the hall and her footsteps echoed softly in the chamber. I looked at the basket on the table, filled with prepackaged protein bars that looked like they would taste like chalk.

I ripped one open with shaking fingers and tore into it. It was some kind of strawberries and cream flavored bar that, if I wasn’t literally starving, would have tasted like biting into faintly strawberry-flavored paste. The texture and flavor reminded me of the meal replacement bars my great grandmother used to stock her pantry with; I had gotten in trouble because I begged to try one, as most six year olds do, and didn’t finish it because of the taste.

As I finished it in probably record-breaking time, the inside of my mouth felt like it was being slowly bound by glue. The break room I was in had a sink, and little paper cups on the counter. I stood and fumbled with a cup, nearly dropping it when it was halfway full. So close, I was so close to drinking it, but I stopped. It smelled horrible, worse than the smell of mildew on a load of laundry left in the washer for days. What if Umbrella was poisoning its employees? What if its filtration system was compromised? Plenty of horrible images flashed through my head: sewage no longer being filtered, dead bodies floating in whatever is used to purify a massive supply of water. I nearly gagged, pouring out the cup so fast it splashed over the edges of the sink a little bit. Tap water was a no-go. 

“Fuck,” I cursed, bringing my nails to my mouth to start biting, but I resisted. No reason to let the potential apocalypse ruin progress on bad habits.

With the tap water no longer a viable option, I began to search the cabinets for bottled water of any kind. Even the small, cheap water bottles grade schools were required to hand out when it was hot outside would do. As I approached the last cabinets, I bumped into something with my hip. I turned to see that it was a water dispenser, one of those things in office sitcoms where employees stand and talk smack about their boss or whatever.

That gave me a little hope; especially because when I went to inspect it, I found a jug of water hidden in between the dispenser and the empty fridge. Safety plastic around the lid and all.

I slid the dispenser to the side and lifted the five-gallon jug onto the table; my back felt a little sore and bending down while opening it sounded worse than picking up the jug for a few seconds.

As I ripped off the plastic and began twisting off the lid, my eyes wandered to the label of the jug. Five gallons. It was 18.9271 liters. It was over forty pounds.

It wasn’t the matter of lifting forty pounds that was alarming, it was the fact that I lifted the jug like it weighed maybe five pounds. I didn’t work retail, I didn’t work in nursing (embarrassingly, I hadn’t signed up for a residency yet), I didn’t work any profession that might have required me to do any sort of heavy lifting. I remembered Rose and I needed extra help lifting our small, IKEA couch when they were moving out because I could barely hold the weight.

I looked up from the table, hearing not only approaching footsteps, but Emily’s voice as well.

“ I’m telling  you Sadie, I  heard them saying someone died.”

“Dude, I believe you, but we’re useless if we don’t try to eat something. You can wait here while Dave and I check the other rooms.”

For the first time since I gained consciousness, I felt so relieved. So relieved that I felt tears threatening to leak.

Emily looked as rough as Sadie and I, her braid messy and beginning to fall out. Just like us, her tanned skin was also gray-toned, marred by dark, bulging veins. Her mascara was streaked, all looks of professionalism for the presentation she would have done that morning was gone.

I left the jug alone and approached Emily for a hug and she reciprocated, I was so thankful she and Sadie were alive.

“Damn, just leave me-”

I opened an arm for Sadie, because I didn’t appropriately express my gratitude that she was alive too. She came in for the hug.

“You’re right,” I told her, “I’m sorry, I think I was still in shock.”

We all took a moment to feel a little human again before I set up the water dispenser. Sadie almost asked me about lifting it like it was nothing, but I asked that we not discuss it until we found Rose and Nana. It was tempting to chug as much water as my body could hold but knowing that I would probably be sick again was enough reminder to slow down.

Emily seemed a little uneasy about being left in the break room by herself, but gave us the thumbs up as we left.

There was nothing on the groupchat we hadn’t read yet and that filled me with dread. I took a deep breath, trying to remember what I learned from the professor in the only psychology class I had ever taken. She had her own practice and worked primarily with clients suffering from severe anxiety and depression.  _ Take a deep breath, use your senses to stay present, touch something comforting, listen to soothing music, eat something small that makes you feel good if you can. Recognize the signs of a meltdown and cope preemptively. _

I couldn’t do all of those, but I let myself touch the soft fabric of my shirt. I remembered buying this shirt on the first shopping trip after my top surgery, Nana and Rose giving it the official Friend Approval™  thumbs up when I tried it on (after their help because I still felt stiff from healing).

Sadie and I went down the same hall she went down when finding Emily. I saw one open door, presumably Emily’s, and two closed doors.

“I couldn’t see if Rose was awake or not,” Sadie said, pointing at the name tag next to the door. ‘ _ Triano, C. R. _ ’. “I knew though, that Emily was awake because she was responding to the chat.”

I stood on my tiptoes to see inside the room through the small window on the door. Rose was on their bed, still unconscious and attached to various tubes and machines. I nearly panicked until I saw the steady rise and fall of their chest. Rose was still alive.

“What do you see?” I heard Sadie ask behind me.

“Shall I describe it to you, or would you like for me to find you a box?” I blurted without thinking.

“I hate this family.”

“Rose is unconscious, and it looks like they’re breathing.” I pulled away from the door, looking around it. It had a similar get up to the inside of mine, but I wasn’t sure if Sadie and I could pick the reader to get them out.

“How do you think we can get it open? Rose can’t from their side in this state.” I asked.

Sadie looked around, scratching the back of her head. Her expression was one of doubt, one that I shared. “We don’t have a key card, a pin, or a handprint, how the hell are we gonna do this?”

“None of us have those things, and I don’t see any employees around-” I stopped, remembering the other hallway.

I pursed my lips, “You’re really not gonna like what I’m about to suggest.”

“What, are you gonna suggest brute force? I don’t see a crowbar, or a fire extinguisher anywhere.” She responded, crossing her arms.

“So that body in the other hall.”

“Dave.”

“It probably has a key card, handprint, and maybe a pin if the person was as forgetful as I hope they were.”

“ _ Dave, _ ” she pleaded, disgusted.

“What the hell else do you think will work?” I held my hands up, also disgusted with the idea.

“I don’t know, going to find Nana and then coming back here to see if they’re awake?”

It could work, Rose had a similar issue with anesthesia as I did. But they also struggled with chronic insomnia, so it was possible that their body was using the time to catch up on some needed rest.

Sadie groaned, “Fuck, there’s also a chance that we’ll need to do the same for Nana’s door. I hate this. I hate you.”

“Mood.”

“Dave!”

I didn’t realize just how much I wasn’t excited for this plan until we were staring down that long hallway, a single fluorescent light flickering. I didn’t register much about this hallway before, having been distracted by the barely-recognizable human corpse on the floor, but I could see the complete destruction of the space now.

The first few feet in looked fine, until the trail of blood started, leading me to believe this person was dragged down here while still alive. The flickering light was half-hanging off of it’s wires. A small puddle of blood was directly beneath it, and I saw the bit of blood on the light itself. It was too tall for me to really examine it, but if it had stopped dripping blood, then this scene was pretty old. In room temperature, blood takes about half an hour to a full hour to dry. I could see what happened here; this person was swung into the light fixture so hard that not only did they knock it loose, but the force of it was near-lethal.

My eyes briefly glanced at the corpse; I hoped that it had been quick and lethal. I also hoped that they had suffered. It was a difficult thought to have.

Towards the end of the hall, I saw a door similar to the others, but it was destroyed. Like, punched out with such force I imagined the Hulk bursting through it. Or the Kool-Aid man. My brain went with that image, of the Kool-Aid man breaking the door down saying ‘Oh yeah!’ and wreaking havoc on this facility. That was a dumb thought. 

“Dave,” Sadie whispered, “Didn’t one of your classmates say that her boyfriend died and got up?”

I nodded, “Yeah, but that was in a matter of minutes, I think. Wouldn’t it be up by now?” I gestured to the body.

Sadie looked incredibly uncomfortable, “Fine, but you do it. It’s your idea.”

I wanted to argue, but she had a good point. It was my idea, and it was a proper disgusting one too. I made a noise of reluctant agreement and continued forward. “Just be my eyes, yeah?” I asked.

Sadie gave a thumbs up and remained in place.

I turned back to the body and hummed in discontent, in true discomfort actually, as I inched closer and closer to it.

Never in my life had I been so grateful of being near a recently-deceased person, and I specifically mean recently-deceased. Under the right circumstances, a body won’t develop an odor for up to nearly three days after death. It wouldn’t last that long as it was, in a slightly colder than room temperature space. But it was mostly shielded from the elements, and it looked like the insides were still inside. By all means, the corpse probably wouldn’t start to really smell until a few hours later, and I hoped that we would be gone by then.

I softly cleared my throat and without moving forward more, I tried to see for sure that it was dead. It wasn’t breathing, but then when I thought about it, they probably wouldn’t breathe anyway. If it’s dead on its feet, would it even breathe? All mechanics of zombification I saw on television or in game franchises were fair game, and even the ones I wasn’t aware of. Maybe these fuckers could breathe and I was about to just serve myself as a feast to a dormant zombie?

“ _ Dave _ !” 

I spun around on my heel, pure terror seizing my heart and I nearly bolted away until I noticed the frustrated look on Sadie’s face.

“Hurry up! I don’t wanna stand here forever!” She whispered loudly.

I breathed out hard, and waved a hand at her, I needed to hurry this along.

Experimentally, I reached for its feet. It wasn’t a snake, so it couldn’t bite me -immediately- if I grabbed it by the feet.

With my grip on the ankles, I began to drag the body. It wasn’t as light as the five gallon jug was, but it was lighter than I expected. Its ankles were cold, and it was stiff like I was dragging a department store mannequin; that part at least let me pretend for a moment that I wasn’t pulling a dead body around by the ankles. Just think of a mannequin. A mannequin that might have had a family, but also contributed to my and my friends’ collective torment for the last eight hours.

Sadie acted as my spotter as I dragged the body to Rose’s door. When we passed the break room, I heard Emily stand from her chair and soon she was staring at us from the doorway. If I imagined it from her perspective, Sadie was probably directing me as I dragged a corpse down the hall, leaving a dark trail of coagulated blood.

Emily stared at us, mouth agape and eyes wide. For a moment I thought she was going to pass out. “What, uh, whatcha got there?” She finally said.

_ A smoothie. _

Shut up.

“Um, well,” I stood, letting the legs fall loudly on the tile floor. “We need to use this body to get in to the other rooms since we think Rose and Nana are still out cold and can’t get out from the inside. We need a handprint, keycard, and pin number to open the doors from the outside.” I explained in almost a single breath.

Emily closed her mouth, eyebrows now raised instead of furrowed, “Okay.” She said and backed into the break room again.

Sadie sighed behind me, “I am so tired of this life.” 

“Yeah, me too.” I said, grabbing the corpse’s ankles again and pulling it the last few feet to Rose’s door.

“So, Sadie,” I began, attempting to hoist the corpse up, “I need you to do me a favor.”

“Wow, I already hate what you’re about to say.”

“One of two things; one, do you think you can find a wet paper towel or something to wipe the hands off? I highly doubt the print can be read with this much blood on it.”

“Okay.”

“Two, I might need your help searching this body for the card and pin.”

Sadie covered her face with her hands momentarily, “This white people bullshit is going to get me killed, Dave. I want you to write it on my gravestone that it was your specific bullshit that fucking killed me.”

“That’s,” I paused, “Entirely fair, so long as you don’t tell everyone that I just dragged a dead body around when we get out.”

She gave a thumbs up and started to walk to the break room before she stopped. “Just, just come with me.”

“Why?”

“Buddy system, I’m not gonna leave you alone with a fucking dead body. What if it comes back?”

“Wouldn’t it have by now though? Also, we’ve been leaving Emily alone in the break room.”

“I don’t know, it feels like a save point. Just humor me, please?” She pleaded, a look of genuine concern on her face.

I didn’t know why I was arguing so much on this, so I dropped the body again and followed her. There was literally no downside to leaving the body alone and going with her.

The soft blue light of the break room welcomed us as we stopped by again. Emily had her phone charging on the counter from one of the several outlets available.

“Where’d you find the charger?” I asked as Sadie grabbed a dining napkin from the basket.

Emily nodded towards where her phone was charging, “Over there in the last drawer; it was the only Apple charger too.”

“Why bother? Isn’t the world ending, won’t all connection be lost anyway?” Sadie asked as she turned on the faucet. She had a similar reaction as I did when I first smelled it and shut it off immediately. “Mmkay, I’m just gonna use a little bit of our water or I will be sick.”

“That’s fair, I could smell that from over here,” Emily said. “But we’ve been able to message each other so far, we might as well make use of it while we still can.”

I nodded, at least with that, we could stay in contact. I remembered that I had messages from my cousin that I never answered.

**Novatious:** Dave, I know we make jokes about paranoia but I think for once you should listen to your gut

**Novatious:** Dave?

**Novatious:** Dave seriously

Two more messages were sent later, about three hours ago.

**Novatious:** Harland and Innsmouth is a total blackout

**Novatious:** I asked my Insta friend who’s about an hour away and she said that no one outside could get a hold of anyone by phone or text. There’s a rumor that the perimeter is in lockdown

**Novatious:** Fuck I don’t know if I’m texting a dead man or not

**Novatious:** There’s NOTHING on any news sites, not even the power outage and boil advisory. It got taken down an hour after you stopped responding; I even tried calling you and it said your number was no longer in service.

I tried to send her a message but it kept failing; she probably tried sending more too but the connection was cut off. Cursing under my breath, I let the screen fade and put my phone on the table a little aggressively. Emily and Sadie both looked at me.

“Sorry. That was my cousin. This is definitely as bad as I thought it was. Harland is completely closed off and cut off from the outside world. Innsmouth, too.” I let my head fall into my hands.

“Wait, doesn’t that cousin still live in Kentucky?” Sadie asked.

“Yeah, but these are from a few hours ago. I think she was trying to send more messages, but it was too late. Shit, you can’t even find anything about the power outage or about the water.”

If Sadie could have looked more terrified, she would have. “I had to take a history class for poli-sci, one of the ways the government could keep things quiet was to forcibly shut people up by closing all lines of communication. This kind of thing happened during like, every humanitarian disaster, any case of human rights violation,  _ ever _ .”

Emily groaned, “And if no one can get in or leave, then the government controls what story is presented and what evidence is allowed to be gathered from it. Including bodies and any samples of something as simple as household dust.” The bitter tone in her voice was strong.

“Okay, but they can’t keep it closed forever, right? I mean, for fuck’s sake, people are gonna get a little suspicious if no one hears from a single soul from the Harland-Innsmouth area. How are they going to stop people from getting out, by gunpoint?” I held my hands up in slight exaggeration but as soon as those words came out of my mouth, I realized how easily this country had done it before and how easily it could be done again.

There was an uncomfortable silence as the reality of the situation began to sink in. What a weird word, it was. When you think of reality, you think of paying bills or of the hangover after a night of pretending reality wasn’t a thing. You don’t always think about the reality of facing consequences for decisions that were made without your consent.

The thought of that made me sick. 

I abruptly stood from where I sat down for the majority of that conversation, startling Sadie and Emily from that sobering silence. “Alright, that’s enough of that. Let’s just get out of whatever the fuck this place is because if I’m gonna die, I’d like to see the sky one last time.” I made an ‘okay’ gesture with one hand and strolled out of the room, not checking to see if Sadie was following me with a wet napkin.

I turned towards Rose’s door to make friends with the corpse again when my blood ran cold.

It was gone.

The faint trail of congealed blood simply stopped at the door, but the body it came from had vanished.

“Okay, now what the-”

I turned to enter the break room again when I saw the hand, gray and stained red-brown reaching for me. I felt small compared to its standing form, easily half a foot taller than me. What remaining face it had was devoid of any sign of life, and I was overwhelmed by its stench. It was the same as from the sink but so much stronger that if I wasn’t petrified I would have thrown up immediately.

No sound, I couldn’t get a single sound out until after it had lunged towards me with its remaining arm. I couldn’t back away in time because my socks slid on the tile and wow, fuck, this was the worst position to be in. One hand pushing its functional arm away from me and the other pushing against its shoulder, just barely keeping it far away enough that its audible bites were ineffective.

Panic set in and I cried for help, flailing to keep it away from me. A jagged nail pierced my forearm when my grip slipped and Jesus fuck it almost sank its teeth into my collarbone, so close to a major artery. My own blood dripped onto my shirt, my face, my neck, and, and, and-

I was going to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, as always, please give a comment because it lets me know people are actually reading this.  
> So in this chapter, Dave is in and out of consciousness for the first half, experiencing indescribable pain from experimentation and is misgendered by a researcher overseeing his progress. He hears bits and pieces of their conversations: Morgan is dead, and so is either Ewan or Wyatt- potentially both. Umbrella is starting something called the "Apocalypse Program" Eventually he wakes up in the room, empty, and is let out by Sadie who he finds out to be alive through group chat activity (same with Emily). Dave finds out that Sadie and Emily were also experimented on as they all have the same visible symptom of having noticeably dark veins and sickly pale or gray-toned skin. Dave also notices some weird things, like picking up heavy objects with less resistance. Shenanigans ensue with dragging a corpse around to attempt to get Nana and Rose out of their rooms, Lord of the Rings is quoted, and memes are referenced. Eventually, Dave and Sadie go back to the employee break room where Emily is sitting. They find out that the Harland-Innsmouth area is entirely blacked out and closed off; no one can get in or out. Dave nearly panics and decides that he wants to get the others out of their rooms because he wants to see the sky one more time before he dies, and is attacked by the corpse-turned-zombie in a totally wicked cliffhanger.


	4. I Couldn't Give A Shit About Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guess who was really depressed and unmotivated to do anything beyond the bare minimum of survival (it me).  
> I'm back, baby! This chapter was surprisingly not longer than the last chapter which was like, what, 8k words? Which is incredible of course, until I realized that my characters *still* aren't where I want them to be. So instead of posting a chapter of 16k words, I decided to (again) split them up and post one now because I want external validation and post the next one at a later date. I promise I'll try to post sooner next time, I just got hit with a real bad slump.  
> As promised, some triggers to be concerned about in this chapter include: suicidal ideation, gender dysphoria, transphobia from a close relative, mentions of vomiting, gore/graphic depictions of violence, blood, potential body horror, lots of swearing (I used 'fuck' 22 times in this chapter AGAIN), zombies, emotional breakdown, crying, and I think that's all of them but please let me know if you think another one should be added.

When I was about fourteen, I knew I felt different about my body than most other girls did. Even from the girls I knew, who raged against the idea that femininity revolves around makeup and subservience, that your body has to be a specific type if you’re skinny or overweight, that you should smile, _because you’ll look prettier_ . In high school, when certain parts of my body began to grow more _pronounced_ than they had before, I did horrible things to myself. I wore sports bras so tight that they left angry red marks on my skin when I took them off before bedtime. I wore jackets throughout the boiling summer, even on the days that teachers told me I should take them off, because passing out from heat exhaustion sounded better than letting that body be on display.

It became ‘that body’ instead of ‘my body’.

Mom thought it was funny, endearing because I ‘just wasn’t ready to be a woman yet’. She humored me with loose fitting shirts and jeans that didn’t broadcast my body shape until I was about seventeen. All jokes aside, I did whatever I could to not let others know that I even had a physical form.

And then, one day I came home with hair almost as short as my father’s. I sat in the girl’s bathroom with a classmate who brought in safety scissors because I paid her twenty bucks to chop it all off. The following six months were the worst in my life. Mom did everything she could to put me in situations where I had to wear dresses, makeup, the most feminine of clothing. Family gatherings, weddings that we normally would have skipped out on, telling me that employers wouldn’t think of hiring me if I looked like, well, a slur used against lesbians. When she realized that it wasn’t a matter of being gay, it became unbearable.

I remembered looking at my father’s bottle of Xanax and the bottle of wine that Mom was saving for my high school graduation. Never, not once in my life had I felt worse about myself. 

I remembered opening the bottle of Xanax, the bottle I swiped from my parents’ medicine cabinet. Dad didn’t even take it anymore, he hated how it made him feel. He had another month’s supply in there, but I figured one bottle would be enough. I couldn’t find the wine, it was probably hidden away somewhere that we all forgot about. Doing this, I figured, would have been the final word. It was my choice, my decision, _my fucking body_.

I closed the bottle of Xanax. It was my choice, and I was going to make the choice to live.

I applied to a community college in Vermont, graduated high school with a 3.3 GPA and told my parents that they could find me in the phone book under my real name, “David Russo”.

I wasn’t going to die.

I was going to fight, and I was going to live.

 

Pain radiated throughout my arm as the thing trying to eat me dug its jagged nails into me, my blood staining my shirt.

Chairs could be heard being pushed away in the break room, Sadie and Emily must have heard the commotion. 

The zombie above me rasped with effort, how the hell could something dead be so strong? It snapped its teeth close towards my chin and I yelped, thinking it managed to bite me.

Sadie barreled out of the break room, passing me and the zombie. She whipped her head around and finally saw what was happening. Emily was close behind, skidding to a stop and grabbing the zombie by the collar of its lab coat. Sadie gripped the side of the coat and began pulling alongside Emily.

With just enough room to start getting away, I kicked it, square in its chest with as much force as I could muster.

What happened next was when I knew things were more complicated than we originally thought.

It was only just a kick, I wasn’t a weight trainer, I wasn’t a soccer player, I didn’t do anything to develop the strength in my legs. But somehow, the kick I delivered sent the zombie back almost ten feet. It was so much force that it ripped the zombie from both Sadie and Emily’s grips.

There was a tense moment between the zombie hitting the floor and me scrambling to my feet.

“What the hell, I thought it was dead!” Sadie wiped her hands on her pants.

“Oh my god, that smell, it’s fucking disgusting!” Emily held a wrist to her nose, tears forming in her eyes.

Sadie looked over at me and helped me up to my feet after noticing that I was shaking so bad that I could barely function. “Dude, what was that?” She asked, eyes on me like she was sizing me up.

“I don’t fucking know, I panicked! I wanted it away from me.” Hands on my head, eyes widened, I wasn’t sure if what just happened really did happen.

Emily started waving at us, unable to get her words out and I didn’t understand what she was signaling until I saw the zombie start to get up again. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_! What do we do?” She hissed.

“Kill it!” I stressed, but realized that none of us had a way of killing it from a distance; who the hell wanted to try getting close to it? I looked into the break room and saw the chairs; they looked cheap and well-used. If there’s anything you can count on from mega corporations, it’s that they’ll cut corners wherever they can.

When the zombie was finally standing semi-upright, I ducked into the break room and kicked a chair away from the table. Holding the seat down with one hand, I yanked one of the front legs off, the sound of wood splintering and metal pieces hitting the floor filled the room.

“What are you doing?!”

“Something!”

I ran back into the hallway, watching the zombie as it stumbled its way towards us again. As someone who had literally never done anything remotely combative, I started to wonder if this was a good idea, truly. But what were the other options? We couldn’t run around this thing forever, and we still needed its credentials to get Rose and Nana out of their rooms, possibly the building as well.

I took a step forward and swung at the zombie’s head, as if I were swinging a baseball bat.

Chunks of blood sprayed from the force of the swing, hitting the ceiling, the wall next to us, splattering with wet sounds. It wasn’t human anymore. The zombie stumbled backwards and before it could stabilize and move forward again, I knocked it back with another hit from the blood-stained, kind-of-dented end of the chair leg. It wasn’t human anymore. Leather dress shoes squeaked against the tile as the zombie fell down, and to make sure it wouldn’t get up again I brought the same end of the chair leg down onto what remained of its forehead, the skull breaking with an audible crack. It wasn’t human anymore.

I dropped the chair leg, chest heaving and hands shaking. Whipping around on my heels, I grabbed a corner between two hallways and threw up again.

In my peripheral vision, I watched Sadie and Emily approach the motionless zombie. “Holy shit,” Sadie mumbled and kicked its foot. No response.

“Dave, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s dead but how did you do that?” Emily asked

I spat at the floor one last time before standing upright, “I have, and I seriously mean this, no idea.” I couldn’t shake the memory of how the crack of its skull reverberated up the chair leg. I kept wiping my hands on my pajama pants like it would make the feeling go away. As if I didn’t have enough problems with nightmares already.

I walked into the break room and grabbed one of the paper cups, filling it up at the water dispenser and washing my mouth out in the sink. Of course I knew that we still needed that body to open the other doors, but I wanted to pretend for a moment that none of this was real and that I was just having a very detailed, very fucked up dream and I was going to wake up any minute.

I was startled out of my dissociation demo when I felt a gentle hand on my back.

Sadie pulled her hand back like she had touched fire, “Sorry,” she said. “You’ve been in here for a few minutes and we were worried about you.” Behind her, I saw Emily standing in the doorway.

I gave a feeble thumbs-up. Had I really been spacing out for that long?

 

When my hands stopped shaking and I was more confident that I wouldn’t throw up again, we emerged from the break room. I felt a jolt in my heart when I looked for the corpse, but it was there still, not a drop of blood or brain matter out of place. The chair leg was still off to the side where I had dropped it. I half expected a swarm of zombies to come out when I dropped my weapon, but it was still quiet save for the hum of the fluorescent lighting accompanied by the occasional sound of its blinking.

By all accounts, the space looked as normal as it could given the circumstances.

“Okay, so we need to check its pockets for anything that could be useful, and I guess still drag it around?” Sadie suggested.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget that image of you and Dave dragging the body.” Emily snorted.

“I humbly request that we don’t bring that up once we’re out.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. I approached the decommissioned zombie and kicked its foot, even though Sadie did the same earlier. I had no idea what to expect anymore; even after that monologue before being kidnapped about stumbling through life, I felt like I had even less understanding of cause and effect in the present situation.

The zombie remained motionless. I pretty thoroughly destroyed the majority of its skull, so reasonably, the brain was mush. But, it also was dormant for several hours before it nearly ripped an artery out of my neck, so anything was fair game I figured.

I bent down and reached for its ankles, beginning to drag it back to Rose’s room. The blood chunks and pieces of brain that leaked out smeared against the Umbrella emblem and trailed some more as I walked towards Rose’s door. Sadie grabbed the wet napkin she left on the counter and started to wipe off the zombie’s decaying blood and my blood off of its hand. The biometric reader sounded with a soft ring, turning green to indicate that it accepted the print. Emily noticed that the corpse had a lanyard on the inside pocket of its lab coat, attached to an ID badge, with a stripe on the back similar to a debit card. Dr. Phil Fredericks. We still couldn’t find a pin number until Sadie mentioned we look in his wallet.

I pulled the leather wallet out of its front pocket, taking out anything that had something written on it. There was one folded piece of paper with some vaguely legible chicken scratch. Ellie had an ultrasound appointment on Thursday next week; eight in the morning. Leslie had a game at the Washington County baseball field this Saturday afternoon. It was alarming how human Phil was before he turned into a monster. It was disturbing how human someone can be, living a life with a spouse and a kid but also willingly doing any work for Umbrella that involved a fucking facility like the one we were in. And of course, to drive the point home, I stumbled across a picture with a woman in her thirties with a baby bump and a kid who looked to be of middle school age. Phil looked like any other guy you’d see walking down the street; part of me felt bad for him and part of me thought, well, good riddance.

There was a badly smudged piece of paper behind the picture, written in pencil with the number ‘4968’. Or was it ‘4963’? I couldn’t tell. The more I looked at it, the six could have been a zero with how hastily this was written. I pursed my lips.

I read the number out loud to Sadie who was typing it in.

She turned to me and shook her head, “We have three tries left.”

“Try ‘4963’ then?” My voice went up in pitch, not liking the sound of there being limited tries, but that made sense.

“Nothing, two tries left.”

I hummed in a higher pitch, “Try ‘4903’?”

She punched the number in and gave a thumbs up when the screen flashed green. Emily swiped the card in the reader and thankfully, _finally_ , the door was opened. That was quite awful, because I realized just how fucked we could have been if we had used up all our tries. The door could have needed credentials of a higher clearance, don’t know where we would have found that. The building could have locked down hardcore and we would have never gotten out. The whole place could have a self-destruct mode as a fail safe.

I forcefully ignored the last thought, because that one was actually possible given Umbrella’s unconfirmed-but-pretty-likely past.

My heart jumped into my throat as we entered Rose’s room. It wasn’t set up like mine was because the bed wasn’t immediately visible from the entrance.

To our left though, was Rose.

They were curled up on their bed, tubes and all removed. I noticed Sadie and Emily looking away, because even if you’re good friends with someone, seeing them almost entirely nude was a little weird if it hadn’t been previously discussed. Rose and I had an agreement in our apartment when we lived together, that nudity was cool and we had to give a heads up if we were bringing guests. It was nice because there was body positivity there without it being sexual. We don’t come out wearing clothes anyway, if you’re home and nudity makes you comfortable, go for it bro (with the permission of other roommates, of course).

I saw the table towards the back wall across from the door; it had the same bins that my room had, with the same plastic bags.

“Hey, can one of you grab their clothes?” I asked as I walked around the table. Rose’s sleeping expressions ranged from peaceful sleep to all-out drunken pass out. I’m talking mouth open, drool on the pillow, soft snoring and some half-mumbled nonsense during deep sleep kind of pass out. I can’t make fun of them because I had a whole ass conversation with them once in my sleep that I don’t remember. I kept talking about how the guy from the “Change My Mind” meme was actually a garbage human being who didn’t believe in cis dude privilege and was horribly racist and homophobic and overall Bad™. They hadn’t let me forget it since.

Rose was gently snoozing, the bags under their eyes as visible as ever. Just like the rest of us, their skin was marked by the dark veins. I had already seen a pattern, but I was beginning to wonder the extent of what happened when I was in and out of consciousness. What did Umbrella do to us?

I placed a hand on their shoulder, seeing Emily bring over their clothes. Sadie had come to where I was standing. “Rose?” I said softly.

They hummed in sleepy frustration, but their eyes began to open. I had done this a few times when we were roommates; waking them up when their phone’s alarm didn’t go off like it was supposed to. 

Their voice was uneven, squeaky with sleep. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know.” 

Rose sat up more, rubbing their eyes. “I was really hoping this was an extremely elaborate dream.” They sighed, “I feel like ass.”

I stood upright and moved so Emily could hand them their clothes. “We’re glad you’re okay,” she said.

“What happened?”

“Umbrella.” Sadie responded with a sour tone and sour face.

“Fuck, I remember now. I wish I could say I was surprised but this is pretty on brand for mega pharmaceutical companies. Did poison control send them?” Rose ripped open the plastic bag.

Emily shrugged, “It’s possible they have an in. Or they run poison control. Who fucking knows at this point?” 

Rose and Emily stayed in the break room as Sadie and I worked to open Nana’s room. Rose didn’t have quite an appetite yet so they pocketed an energy bar for when their stomach eventually called. For shits and giggles, they sent the Jerry meme; the screenshot of the mouse from the cartoon of our collective childhoods. Generally Rose used it for when they were super stoned but it felt pretty appropriate to be used now. It was good to see their name in the group chat.

In hindsight, I wished we had just stayed in the hallway that the corpse was in to begin with. Nana’s room was right across the one with the hulked out door; her initials right next to the door to taunt us. ‘Martinez, M. M.’

“Are you telling me we’ve been dragging this body more than we had to?” Sadie groaned.

“At least you’re not the one dragging it.”

“I don’t think there’s a good angle in this situation, Dave. Seeing this hasn’t been entirely fun.”

I looked at her, unsure of how to formulate my response because I was torn between “Well you drag it next time,” and “Did _you_ bash its brains out?” but we didn’t need to take it anywhere after this room and the second response was just bitchy and uncalled for. I opted to not respond.

I pulled the body upwards, slapping its hand on the biometric reader. Once accepted, I swiped the ID card and put in the pin number, almost typing it in the wrong order.

As the door opened, I noticed that it had the same layout as mine, but Nana wasn’t in the bed. I frowned and strolled in, expecting to see-

I heard a shriek of absolute horror and I nearly jumped several feet in the air. In the corner, to the right of the door, was Nana curled up, shaking violently as if she was expecting something else and not me walking in. I saw a mix of immediate relief and panic cross her face, she might not have known how to react to the situation.

Behind Sadie and I, were frantic footsteps following the sound of the scream. Rose and Emily must have heard it.

In a tense moment, I think we didn’t know how to react to what had just happened.

But the second it passed, Nana was sobbing uncontrollably, curling forward into herself. I had no idea what she saw or heard since she had been awake, or how long she had been awake. I felt my heart break a little, because I had a realization then: none of this should have been happening. We should have been sitting around the student center, bitching about the coming of finals and stuck-up professors. Job applications and scrambling to perfect our resumes. Netflix removing a series with decent representation of different and overlapping communities, and what to order from the takeout place. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel the tears coming too.

The four of us sat down on the floor with her and we waited. We waited because to be honest, we all had started crying. Even those of us who had a bit of a complex about crying in front of other people, like myself, shed a few tears. Emily held Rose’s hand, Sadie had an arm around my shoulders, and I gently placed a hand on Nana’s arm, remembering that she didn’t like excessive physical contact during breakdowns. If I had seen it outside of my body, I would have found it touching. But it wasn’t touching. It was a goddamn shame is what it was.

Why was _this_ the world we were given? Why did _we_ have to face the consequences of those who made disastrous, catastrophic decisions, and those who were willing to look the other way? 

 I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when we pulled away finally. For the most part, our collective crying had been reduced to sniffles and shaky breaths. Considering the circumstances, I was surprised that I felt better after crying so hard. It wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, but I felt a little more in control than I had before. At least I still had the emotional capacity to recognize that this was a fucking nightmare, and that we had a right to join Nana in that breakdown.

“How long have you been awake?” Rose asked, breaking the silence with a raw and croaky voice.

Nana sighed, squinting her eyes. “I don’t know for sure, my phone is completely dead. I woke up to people screaming.” She ran a hand through her hair, “I think something got out. I peeked out my window once and saw someone get thrown into the lamp so hard that blood splattered.” Her hand rested over her mouth then.

I gasped quietly; she had been awake for a while. 

“Nana, I’m so sorry,” Sadie said, “I didn’t know you were awake, I would have come to let you out sooner.”

Fuck, she was right. We had dicked around for a while before we let her out. It would have been a smarter idea to check if she was asleep at all instead of assuming. 

“Nah fam, it’s not like you were just leaving me here for fun.” Nana cleared her throat. “Where are we, even?” She asked.

The four of us exchanged glances because in reality, we hadn’t gotten that far. I had the theory that we were in a bunker over a mile underground. When Emily spoke up, she suggested that we were in the basement of the local hospital. Sadie believed that we were deep in the Washington Forest, since shady shit had happened there in the past from drug deals gone wrong to hikers going missing. She brought up a good point, because Washington county had several signs posted since the eighties about not hiking alone because of bears and other potentially dangerous wildlife. I hadn’t thought much of it, not being a local and all, but I began wondering if some of those missing hikers really did run into bears or something worse.

I stopped myself because I wasn’t even sure if we were still in Vermont to begin with. Wouldn’t someone have noticed something fishy about people going in and out of the woods in business attire on a regular basis? How would these people get home without attracting so much attention?

Sadie helped Nana to her feet, “If you need to, there are chargers in a room down the hall. We’re still able to text on the group chat for some reason.”

Nana nodded and walked towards the table on the other side of the room. The plastic that contained her clothes and phone was tossed haphazardly to the side. She grabbed her Spiderman cased cellphone and padded back to where the rest of us stood. She looked at my arm and frowned, “Dave, what happened?”

“Oh shit,” I muttered, forgetting about my arm entirely.

But when I looked at it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The blood was still there, dried on my arm and shirt and neck, but the actual scratch had started to show signs of early scarring. Specifically, hypertrophic scarring. Something that doesn’t happen until days after the initial injury.

“Dave, that’s impossible.” Emily examined my arm with significant alarm.

“Lots of things have been impossible so far,” I sighed in resignation. “Let’s worry about it later. I don’t think I have the ability to really address it right now.”

Emily, in fact, everyone seemed unsatisfied with that response, but none of them argued further. They probably felt similar; that was a problem for future us.

As we left Nana’s room, I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what happened to the smashed door, so as the others began heading down the hall, I stood back to read the name tag next to the open room.

‘Armstrong, E. T.’ I remembered what I heard in the twilight sleep from earlier: Armstrong’s, _Ewan’s_ , mutations were so quick and intense that the people here could barely keep them under control. Did he manage to make it out? I felt a little nauseous about the fact that Ewan must have been so strong that he chased off the others and fucking decimated the remaining geneticist. 

I heard Rose’s voice call my name, but I didn’t really register it; the bed in Ewan’s room was massive. Twice the size of our beds, and if I remembered correctly, Ewan was only about half a foot taller than me.

The leather straps on the bed were significantly thicker than mine were, and they were ripped apart. The strap that went around the left wrist was missing entirely.

To the side of the bed, I noticed the mirror, cracked. The shattered pieces littered the floor up to a foot away from the mirror. Behind it, I saw a faint blue glow. I looked around to find something that could be used to sweep away the glass, because I had to know what were behind those mirrors in our rooms too.

“Dave, seriously, we turn our backs for like a second and then you-” Rose stopped when they saw the room I was in. “Fuck, what happened in here?”

“Ewan was in this room, I think he’s the one who got out.” I said, standing on my tiptoes, trying to see over the remaining glass. “I think they were monitoring us behind the mirrors in our room.”

“Wow, not a fan of that.” Rose sighed, walking towards the glass.

“Dude-”

“It’s fine, I’ll be careful,” they said. I felt a little nervous because they were wearing their old sandals, and those don’t really protect the feet much. True to their word though, Rose was slow and steady, and careful to not accidentally kick glass back towards my way.

They leaned a little bit, and cursed under their breath.

“What is it?”

“You’re right, it’s some kind of office room with a bunch of computers.” Rose hummed in distress, “That certainly is a dead body in there.”

“Gross, what does the head look like?”

Rose turned to look at me with disgust, “Why?” At first I was annoyed, but then I remembered that Rose wasn’t present for what happened with Dr. Phil’s body.

“The last dead body we encountered kind of came back to life.”

They sighed, rubbing their forehead before peering into the room again, “Half and half.”

“Half and half?”

“Half is still there, the other half was smashed by,” they paused, trying to get a better angle, “Something, I can’t see it.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned. “Do you think they have our files or some shit?”

“What do you mean?”

“There were a few times I would wake up and hear what the people were saying. Ewan had uncontrollable mutation, and that’s probably why he was able to get out. I also heard them talking about _our_ mutations, and what better way to be prepared for shit than to see their files on us?” I said.

Rose narrowed their eyes, “Okay, but not right now. I’m not ready to know.”

“Fair.”

Emily’s voice echoed through the hallway, “I swear, Dave you of all of us should know what happens to people in horror movies when they split up.” Her footsteps approached the room we were in. And similar to Rose, when she saw the inside of it, she was taken aback. “What the hell happened here?”

“It’s a long story. We can talk in the break room.” I said.

 

Once in the calming blue break room, it felt like we had reached some form of normalcy. Nothing bad can happen in a room with a save point.

Nana had eaten her energy bar as her phone charged, and Rose broke theirs out too once their appetite showed up. Nana had to turn her head when we passed the body outside of her room, but she took a little comfort in the fact that it wasn’t getting up anymore. If zombies can move with a smashed brain then we might as well call it and hope our respective deities are ready for us.

Emily spoke up once Nana put her phone on the charger. “So I know Dave was awake for part of what happened, I was awake but only for a few seconds. What about you guys?” She asked.

Nana shook her head, “The only time I woke up was when shit started hitting the fan.”

Rose frowned, “I’m not sure. I do remember waking up but I don’t think it was when anyone was in the room.”

“I kind of remember something,” Sadie said.

“I thought you were out for the whole time?”

She frowned, “I think I did wake up, but I could hardly hear what the people were talking about. Someone was arguing about the name of a program, like, ‘apocalypse’ or ‘revelations’.”

“Revelations?” Nana gasped, “Oh god, I should have been going to mass like Mom kept telling me to.”

“I remember them talking about something called the ‘Apocalypse Program’,” I said. “Ewan’s in it, but I don’t remember what they said after that.”

“Who is Ewan?” Sadie asked.

“He was one of the people in my apartment before we were abducted,” I answered.

“Wait, what happened to them? I remember Wyatt and that other girl, uh, Morgan, being there.” Nana frowned.

I sighed, “Wyatt and Morgan are dead, I woke up to someone telling another person to get rid of their bodies.”

“What the fuck?” Sadie let her head fall into her hands.

“But,” I emphasized, “Rose and I found that there are rooms behind the mirrors in our rooms. I think the doors to them are probably locked or closed off if you don’t have clearance. If Ewan mutated so quickly, we probably need to get into those observation rooms to see what they know about us.”

Emily nodded, “The files might be hard to read, but we should probably get them anyway. We may even figure out what this disease is.”

“Oh shit, we might even be able to find other key cards like what was on that body.” Sadie pointed out. “So how do we get in them?”

“We might have to brute force it.”

Sadie sighed, “That’s great, love it. Exactly what I hoped for and more.” She stood, probably struggling with a lot of nervous energy like the rest of us were. She leaned against a pale blue wall, crossing her arms. “Please tell me we’re at least doing this as a group, and not splitting up?”

I pursed my lips and was about to speak until Nana stopped me. “Absolutely, I refuse to split up. That’s how people die in horror movies and I refuse to be the first to go.”

“Nana, you’re a virgin, you’d survive like me.” Emily said.

“You right, but I’m still brown and would be the last to die.” Nana pointed out.

“Where does that leave me?” Emily snorted.

“You’d be the white virgin survivor, you know, the Jamie Lee Curtis type.” I said.

Rose’s eyes widened, “Fuck, does that mean the three of us are gonna die?” They pointed between themself, me, and Sadie. “None of us are virgins, and we also do drugs.”

“ _Did_ drugs,” I corrected Rose, since I stopped smoking weed in the middle of sophomore year.

“Close enough.” They waved their hand at my addition.

“Do you ever think about how fucked up horror is when it’s written by men? Like, when a straight, cis dude dies on screen, it isn’t fetishized or gross otherwise, but if it’s a woman’s death it’s weirdly sexual? And then the gay characters, holy shit,” Sadie said.

I pointed at her, “Nana and I took a film class one year that talked about this and it’s such a huge problem in film that-”

“Oh my god!” Rose groaned, “Can we please just do this? I really want to know what new shit is wrong with my brain and maybe get the hell out of here. Also Sadie that’s a good point, and I read a post about some good horror movies that don’t do that. You know, if we ever get to watch movies again.”

Sadie chuckled, almost grimly, “Damn, dude, alright. We can have a movie date when we get out of here.”

Nana grinned, “I’ll bring popcorn if Dave let’s us have a slumber party in his apartment ever again.”

“Just please don’t spill alcohol on my curtains, they still smell like tequila from last time.”

As we left the break room, we started with the rooms closest to us. First was Emily’s room, but as we approached the door, there was a true fear in my heart when I realized what I would have had to potentially do again.

“I refuse.” I said softly.

Emily sighed, “I know, but-”

“Wait, what are we talking about?” Nana asked.

“I would rather not discuss it.”

“Well, how are we gonna open the door?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know,” I responded, irritated, “But I’d really like to not pick that thing up agai-” Because of the Italian tendencies I was born with, I wildly used my hands with my speech, often for emphasis. Rose understood as well, hence why we usually stayed away from fragile things when inebriated. But specifically, in that moment, I motioned towards Emily’s door with an exaggerated gesture, and my hand hit the metal door.

I pulled my hand away immediately, curling inward a little because doing that really hurt. I grunted in pain while also trying to calm my heart because the sound of impact felt loud and echoed in my body and in the hallway.

When I looked up, the first thing I noticed were the expressions on everyone’s faces. All of them were a unique expression of shock and mild fear, and I didn’t understand until I followed their collective gaze to the door I hit.

It wasn’t like the hulked out door, but I had left a sizeable dent in the metal, so much that the screen of the card reader was flickering. I heard the clicks and sparking of electricity, I broke something in the mechanism for sure; trying to open it the normal way would be impossible.

“Dave, what the shit?” Emily muttered.

"That’s the second time you’ve done something like that.” Sadie chimed in.

“ _Second_ time?” Nana looked me over from bottom to top, “What the hell happened since I was in there?” She pointed backwards to where her room was.

I held my hands up, “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on, and I think I’m going nuts.”

Rose held up a finger, “Dave, do you think you could do that again?”

I looked between my bruising hand and the dented door, “I mean, I could, but it would hurt a lot,” I mumbled.

They shucked off their jacket and handed it to me, “Use this to cushion the blow. It’ll hurt still, but you won’t break your hand, probably.” They added the ‘probably’ after a short pause. I looked at the jacket, understanding that they wanted me to wrap it around my fist. “Try to avoid layering a button over your fist, some of those were custom-made.”

“Wait, are we seriously suggesting that Dave break his hand to open the door?” Emily turned to Rose.

“Is there a better way of opening the door?” They asked.

“I think I’ll be okay not knowing what’s on my file or whatever.”

Sadie groaned, “Look, I don’t want to wait here forever, we gotta get a move on or we’re gonna lose readers.”

“What do you mean?” Emily asked.

“Look at Dave’s arm, Em.” She pointed to my arm that sustained the attack earlier. “That doesn’t really look like a fresh scratch, does it? Whatever they did to Dave probably did some weird shit to his body’s natural ability to heal wounds.”

Oh no, it was time to acknowledge what I had been trying to ignore.

I sighed, “Listen, I don’t know what happened while we were asleep, but I have a feeling that it’s done some funky shit to us. The best way to handle it is to just,” I paused, “Go with it and try to prepare for what could be ahead.”

I turned to face the door and began wrapping my hand with the jacket. “Okay,” I hummed to myself, feeling the beginnings of performance anxiety bubble inside me. As silly as it seemed, the idea of doing it intentionally sent a rippling feeling into my stomach. I took a deep breath and reeled back with my jacket-wrapped hand.

A metallic clang echoed around us as I punched the door. It crunched a little more, but I hesitated last minute in fear of the pain.

“Dave, you don’t have to do this,” Rose said, their voice filled with genuine worry.

I cleared my throat, “Nope, it’s okay, I’m gonna do it. I just need to stop psyching myself out.”

One more deep breath and I reeled back again.

This time, I heard the screeching of metal being bent out of place when I felt the impact. I felt a subtle soreness radiate around my wrist and forearm, but I was determined. The door before me was pretty dented, and I could see inside the room through a crack between the door and the frame. 

I hit the door again, this time feeling significant pain in my wrist because I haven’t thrown a proper punch since I was in sixth grade (I sprained my wrist in eleventh grade when I went to an arcade that had one of those strength-testing punching bags). I winced and saw that the opening between the door and the frame was wider now.

“Dave, what are you-” Nana stopped as I unwrapped my hand and placed my foot against the metal.

“Gonna try to force it open.” I said, holding the door frame with both hands to steady myself.

“Dave, you’re really gonna hurt yourself.” Sadie said.

“Too late, I’m determined.”

“Oh my god,” Rose muttered. “This dumbass is gonna get himself killed off soon.”

I couldn’t help the grunt of pain as sharp pain shot from my left hip down to my knee. The gap was widening, I could go a little longer, _just a little more-_

With a deafening shriek, the door popped out of the top part of its frame, giving way just enough that someone could walk through the opening. Also accompanied by the door breaking free was a crunching sound followed by a _pop!_ that rendered me useless. I collapsed to the floor, biting my lip so hard I tasted a hint of my blood. My hip and knee _really_ hurt. I certainly broke something. Several things.

With a tone that conveyed true exhaustion and a little annoyance, Rose spoke up before walking through. “Help him up, I guess.”

I wanted to make a snarky comment, but I was preoccupied with being in serious pain, and Rose had every right to be annoyed. That wasn’t something I should make a habit of.

“Dave, you do realize that this shit is not conducive to surviving the apocalypse, right?” Emily lifted my arm over her shoulders and hoisted me up. 

“I have a hunch that this won’t be a problem for much longer.”

“What? You breaking half of your body?”

I held up the arm that was scratched in the altercation with the zombie earlier. “Em, this is advanced healing. This is something that would happen almost a full week later.”

As I stretched out my leg to rest downward, I felt an intense pop that hurt horribly for a second, but then not at all.

“What was that?” Emily looked at me with horror.

“I think that was my hip popping back into place,” I said, feeling bile rise in my throat. I made a mental note to not try shit like this again in the future, because feeling a limb un-break itself and the pieces sliding back into place was actually the worst thing ever. Worse than dragging a corpse around for an hour.

On the other side, we were in Emily’s room. Just like mine, there was a mirror on one wall for observation purposes. I saw Emily grimace from my peripheral vision, probably having feelings similar to mine when I made the connection earlier.

Seriously, fuck these guys.

 

We went through the rooms one by one, none of us willing to split up. Except for the first room, the rest of the doors were opened normally so that I didn’t have to break half of my body each time. We still couldn't find ways into the observation rooms, so those we had to break in through the glass. By the third room, I was able to walk mostly on my own, limping the whole way. My knee ached, but the further we progressed I found it easier to walk.

Each observation room had computers, none of which had passwords. That probably should have been suspicious but none of us were ready to deal with that just yet.

Each room also had a printer, which we used to our advantage. I withheld the snarky comments rising about doing office work in the apocalypse. Emily had a file of about ten pages, Nana and Rose both had files of eight, Sadie had the most, at a whopping fifteen pages.

And mine was only five.

None of us knew why the variation but by then we were pretty sick of being in there, so we paperclipped our files separately and shoved them into a small messenger bag Emily found on top of a file cabinet. I heard collective groans when I suggested we go to Ewan’s room to get his file too, but it made sense to get it. A whole twenty-seven pages, his file alone was more pages than half of ours combined. I had a feeling we would need it, either to understand the virus or to know what to do if we ran into him.

Speaking of Ewan, we managed to entirely miss a door that wasn't quite as hulked out as his door, but it at least answered the question of where the hell he went after escaping his room. We couldn't really use the stairs to go up, since it looked like he destroyed them on his way up. From this staircase though, we learned one thing: the floor we were on was the lowest floor accessible from there. I hoped that it was the lowest, because I wasn't sure if I could handle seeing even more shit. What could possibly be more hidden and illegal than kidnapping humans and experimenting on them?

 

“I’m kind of scared.”

“Mood.”

“Yeah, same.”

We were standing in the center of the fourway, facing the hall we had not gone down yet. It was shorter than the other three, and had nothing but a janitorial supply closet and a set of heavy double doors with a keypad and a print scanner. Sadie and Emily decided to drag the corpse this time, since I was still walking a little unsteadily. We swiped the ID card, input the same code we used for the other doors, and slapped the corpse’s hand onto the scanner and waited for a tense second.

The light above the double doors blinked green and we heard a clicking sound, the door was open. We jolted a bit as the doors opened on their own, revealing another short hallway with a staircase up.

“Should we keep dragging the body?” Sadie asked.

“Maybe? I’m not sure.” I said.

As we crossed the threshold though, the doors began to close on the corpse before we could bring it further along.

I panicked and grabbed the arm Emily had been dragging and tried to pull it in more, hoping that maybe the door had a sensor and would start to open again. But, I wasn’t fast enough and I watched as the door shut on the corpse’s remaining arm, at around the elbow joint.

Hearing bone crunching and popping, I think, was the worst thing about that. It wasn’t quite wet sounding either, but sludgy, like ripping apart a slightly soggy meatloaf in half.

I cleared my throat, really trying to not be sick again because there probably wasn’t anything left in me.

I stood upright, pinching the bridge of my nose with the hand that was not currently holding a corpse’s severed arm. “I mean fuck it, why wouldn’t this happen?” I grumbled.

“At least we have the arm,” Nana said, looking visibly paler and a little bit more sweaty after witnessing that.

“At least we have the arm,” Sadie grimaced.

Our collective disgusted, annoyed, and just plain fucking tired sighs echoed the same feeling. The feeling of “Oh of course, this might as well happen” and the realization that shit was only about to get even worse, if not fucking weirder.

We all turned to the staircase and began to ascend, unsure of what waited for us.

At least we had the arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! As always, please give some love via kudos and a comment, even if you're telling me to keep it up.  
> Here is a summary of the chapter if you needed to skip it but still want to read the rest:  
> The chapter opens with Dave remembering his adolescence and his realizing that he's trans. His life got pretty bad around his parents because they didn't accept him; he left and went off to college several states away (this is basically a hype up for Dave, he realizes he wants to fight to live).  
> Cut to Dave fighting off the zombie from the end of Ch 3, as Emily and Sadie come to his aid, he kicks the zombie away before ripping a leg off one of the break room chairs and killing the zombie. Dave has a deep gash on his arm, throughout the chapter it heals faster than a normal would does.  
> They continue with their plan and drag the corpse around to get Rose and Nana out of their rooms; everyone sees that they all have the same sickly, vein-y appearance. They also find out that Nana was the one who woke up first, but her phone was dead so she couldn't tell anyone. She saw and heard a lot from her room, and was visibly shaken when they got her out.  
> They make the connection that the mirrors hide observation rooms when they go into the room with the hulked out door and smashed mirror.  
> Trying to get into one of the rooms, Dave feels out his boundaries with his newfound strength, namely by punching and kicking a door open. While this renders him useless for a bit because it broke half of his body, he heals throughout the rest of the chapter and they get the files on everyone so they can learn what happened to them. They also find out that the smashed-door-room belonged to Ewan Armstrong, one of the people taken from Dave's apartment. They theorize that his mutations were so intense that he overpowered the people in the facility and broke out.  
> Towards the end, they are ready to leave and make it out of the four-hallway area, trying to drag the corpse with them in case they needed to use its fingerprints to open more doors. The double doors they cross though, closes on the body as they're pulling it through, which severs its only arm from the rest of the body. They continue on, Dave holding the zombie-arm.


	5. Flesh and Bone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yooo, guess who got hella depressed and busy with a job they ended up hating????? It's me, ya boy. I feel like every time I say something about a chapter being longer than I expected, it makes the next chapter even longer. So I'm just gonna say that I'm impressed I fit all of this shit in just under 10k.  
> Some warnings for this chapter include: graphic description of gore/violence, a lil body horror, lots of swearing (managed to get up to 42 in the fuck usage, the answer to life the universe and everything), suspense, post-traumatic symptoms.  
> Again, let me know if I missed a tag and if you need to skip this chapter there will be a summary in the ending notes.

“Okay, now what the fuck.” Sadie groaned as we reached the top of the stairs.

I felt that, because when we reached the top of the staircase, there was another double door entrance closed off. At that point, I was just grateful we had the arm or there would be no way to get out of the corridor.

The doors looked like the ones in a school, but metal. There was a narrow window on each door, and through that window we saw, you guessed it,

Another fucking four-way area.

Rose groaned, “Just when you think we’re gonna get out, this is just great.”

Emily walked forward, peeking through the narrow windows on the double doors. “Guys, this hallway looks different.”

I followed her example, trying to spot the differences like it was some fucked up activity on the back of a cereal box.

Upon first glance, I didn’t see any differences, besides the lack of a corpse on the floor. There was the same emblem on the floor as the last one, sterile white walls and white tile floors. I notice though, that the doors visible weren’t locked like the ones downstairs. They looked like offices.

“Do you see any zombies?” Nana asked.

“I don’t see anyone here,” Emily said.

“Agreed,” I nodded and open the double doors. I watched the light above the double doors flicker green as I swiped the keycard, but there wasn’t a scanner for a hand.

The doors opened automatically, and given how aggressively the ones downstairs closed, we made an effort to go through quickly.

Once inside, I began to see things that made the entire situation significantly more disturbing. There was a printer pushed against a wall with a laminated sign taped above it. ‘Please do not leave cups on top of the printer :)’. Set on top of the printer, defiantly, was a coffee mug emblazoned with ‘#1 Manager’. I could hear the music playing in the distance; “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. There was a motivational poster with a beautiful countryside landscape painting paired with some phrase about how you, too, can climb up the corporate ladder with honest hard work. As we took a few steps forward, I saw words painted on the wall in the hallway to the left of us: _ Preserving the health of the people _ .

There were people who worked here, like in any average office, one floor above a place conducting experiments on human beings.

“I highly doubt they were just writing expense reports down here,” Sadie sighed, having a similar thought.

I took a tentative step forward, now in the center of the four-way. In front, the hallway ended with an elevator. Both to the left and right were offices, though now I could see that this floor was not as empty as I had previously believed.

Rose came to my side, “Is there anything we need on this floor to get out of here?” They asked, eyeing a cracked window with blood splattered on it. In the doorway, I saw a leg sticking out. White dress pants with bloody handprints. The brown low-heeled shoe was partially off the foot.

I shook my head, “I don’t know.”

“Any ideas, Em?” Sadie asked.

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose, “I don’t know either, but there could be something here we need. For evidence.”

“Evidence?” I raised an eyebrow.

Nana caught on before I did though, “If we bring something to the authorities, Umbrella could be held responsible for all of this.” Emily nodded as Nana spoke.

“Is there an authority above Umbrella?” Rose asked.

“Yeah, the rest of humanity.” Sadie quipped. “Are any of them, um, up?”

I looked between both hallways. Some of the doors were closed, but I couldn’t see anything walking around that shouldn’t have been. “I don’t  _ see _ any,”

“God, that smell is still there though.” Sadie groaned, holding her jacket sleeve towards her nose.

“I can’t wait to not smell rotting shit when we get out.” Nana said with the faintest hint of hope in her voice.

We pretty solidly agreed to not split up and went down the hall to the left first. 

You ever have those moments when you feel like you’re out of your body? Like, you’re watching someone else control your body?

That’s what it felt like in that moment.

One day in the psychology class I shared with Morgan, our professor was describing something in a session she had been in (with limited details given confidentiality) with a patient. The patient had been abused as a child and later was in a car wreck; as a result, the patient had more intense depersonalization and dissociative episodes. In a lot of cases, when someone experiences something such as that, it’s like your brain is trying to protect itself in a situation you have no control over. Even after the initial traumatic event, someone could experience moments of dissociation during times of little to no stress. People with posttraumatic stress disorder or acute stress disorder are more predisposed to dissociative episodes in response to traumatic events later in life.

I made a mental note to see a goddamn therapist when this shit was over.

Walking with little struggle, I approached the first door to my right and opened it.

The space was relatively dull; desks set up similar to cubicles with a few personal effects here and there. One desk had several Pop! figurines of characters from a popular BBC television show; another had a report card from the elementary school in Innsmouth tacked on the cork wall. The two desks closest to the door had plastic bowls of ramen, the bags next to them with the emblem of the noodle joint near campus.

The music was a little louder in this room, so one of the computers here was probably the source. As the Backstreet Boys’ song ended, ‘Safe and Sound’ by Capital Cities started playing. My eyes traveled from the desks closest to us with the food to the end of the rectangular room; along the way there was a chair on its side, a green file folder with papers strewn about. The further I gazed, the more disturbing the view was. Nana and I took a few steps forward.

The difference between the smears of blood in the office and in the hallway where I was dragging the body, was that the body was alive -or freshly dead- when it was dragged off. This blood was brighter, more liquid than congealed. Whoever this blood belonged to was killed recently.

I was suddenly regretting that I didn’t bring the chair leg with me when I killed the last zombie. All of the chairs in the office were rolling computer chairs, and those couldn’t be used as effective weapons.

“Is there any-” Emily began to speak, but Sadie interrupted with a finger to her own lips. We watched as Sadie brought the finger to her ear and then pointed to the end of the room. It was hard to hear over the music, but when I heard it, I felt my blood run cold.

Soft growls, animalistic grunts, the sounds of messy eating and crunching and ripping and shredding and I really wanted to leave the fucking room.

I took a step back, ready to just get out when something squealed and I jumped. I looked to my right and saw that Nana had also backed away- into a computer chair that really could have used some WD-40.

Forward was a loud growl, and a head popped up from behind a cubicle. Her bleached-blonde hair was crusted with blood, bits of flesh were stuck between her teeth, and the look in her eyes were nearly vacant, glassy, absent of everything except hunger.

A second head popped up, a woman missing the skin of her left cheek and revealing her teeth.

Another showed himself, still chewing what looked like a piece of artery or jugular, gnashing it between his teeth, wearing the same hungry look even though he looked to have gorged himself on flesh.

“Fuck.” I choked out, holding up the zombie arm I was holding, like it was a weapon that could actually protect us from them.

One after the other, the three zombies stood and began staggering towards us. It looked like they couldn’t run, but they were approaching way faster than I was comfortable with.

“Oh god, what the fuck are we waiting for? We gotta get the fuck outta here!” Nana hissed.

That was a fantastic idea, stellar even. I spun around on my heel to act on that suggestion when literally the worst thing that could have happened, happened.

There were at least six zombies stumbling towards the room, the closest one only a few feet from the door.

Rose acted on impulse, as they had a tendency to do, and slammed the door shut.

“What are you doing?” Sadie balled her hands into fists.

“Three is better than eight,” Rose shouted back.

I turned my head to see the three getting closer, and we had nothing to speak of in terms of defense.

It was time to get creative.

There was a heavy glass paperweight on one of the closer desks, the kind of paperweight that had the three dimensional image in it because of witchcraft, I was convinced. I reached for it, gripping the paperweight so tightly that its edges hurt the palm of my hand. I saw two dolphins in the paperweight, one big and one small. My hands shook violently, still recovering from the last time I killed a zombie. No matter how I tried to rationalize it, I feel complete and utter dread at the thought of killing them.

_ They’re already dead. _

Yeah, but they  _ weren’t _ before, they had families who loved them, pets they cared for, favorite books, they were  _ human _ before this.

_ They wouldn’t want their body to be desecrated like this. _

That was the best I could come up with in that moment, as the bleached-blonde zombie came into arms reach of me.

She held her arms out to grab me, 

_ -I saw the hand, gray and stained red-brown reaching for me- _

I reeled back and smashed the paperweight into her face.

I hated so much how familiar the feeling of smashing a skull was; only this was in closer quarters. No bat-like weapon to separate me from the action. Blood spurted on my hand, my wrist; I wasn’t sure if the sounds of cracking bone belonged to her or me.

I pulled back, but the glass piece stayed lodged in what was remaining of her face. Fuck, I needed that back.

If there was a bright side to this, it was that the zombie dropped like a brick; dead for good that time.

The other two were still coming forward, the taller zombie with the missing cheek flesh began to approach Emily and Rose at an alarming speed.

I knelt down to try to dig the paperweight out of the downed zombie but for fuck’s sake, that thing was in there deep. I groaned in disgust when I felt my fingers digging into the skull to get it out.

Emily shrieked; I whipped my head around to see her being grabbed. Panic fueling every decision I was making, I ignored the glass and launched myself towards-

“Get off of me!” Emily’s voice filled the room, I heard fear, panic, and  _ anger _ .

The zombie was thrown into the back wall like Thor swung Mjölnir into it, full force. But I didn’t see any contact, anything that caused it.

Sadie gaped, “What the-”

“Fuck!” I barked, the third zombie coming. It tripped over the corpse and fell into me. Snapping her teeth at me like a rabid animal, but she could only reach my shirt. I shoved her off of me and to the side; I backed into my friends.

“What the hell happened to it?” Nana pointed at the zombie, thrown like a ragdoll at the wall. I saw blood where the zombie’s head hit the wall. It was no longer moving.

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Emily wrapped her arms tightly around her body.

“Okay, two of them are down, are there other doors out of here?” I asked, rigidly moving around to look. My whole body had tensed up and moving it felt like I was trying to wade through cement. Off to the side, I kept my eye on the third zombie that was struggling to come to its feet. Whatever the virus was, it wasn’t able to completely neurologically bring them back, leading me to wonder what exactly happened to us when we were out.

I wondered what happened when we drank the water.

“There’s a door that way,” Rose pointed. I jumped when I saw them at my side; I was pretty sure no one was on that side, but I was also focused on not dying.

We shuffled around some desks to keep away from the single mobile zombie. The door Rose had pointed to was on the other side of the long room; I was grateful that we no longer had to deal with three zombies walking around. I snuck a glance over my shoulder to see what the other exit situation looked like.

There were more than seven of them by then; pushing against the door. But they weren’t opening it; in fact, it looked as though they couldn’t open it. And it was a regular door, with a handle and no entry code.

Sadie tugged on my arm to bring me back to the present, and then we were in-

A janitorial supply closet.

Nana groaned, "I am, as the kids say, straight up not having a good time, yo."

Surprisingly, the closet was big enough for the five of us, even though we were mostly wide-hipped folks. Not surprisingly, was how awful the room smelled, but for different reasons than in the previous room. Mostly, the smell of bleach assaulted me, mixed with stale water and lemon scented furniture polish. And though the closet could fit the five of us, it wasn’t a pleasant fit; since Sadie was the shortest, she was delegated to sitting on a small, bare desk missing a chair. Not sure how that got there other than some cheap attempt by corporate to liven up a closet so it looked like an ‘office’, but Rose and Nana were squished towards the back corner while Emily and I were closest to the door.

“So, Rose,” Nana said, using her t-shirt to wipe away the stress sweat from the bridge of her nose. She readjusted her glasses, “When you pointed to this door,” she continued.

“Listen, I saw a door and I panicked.” They said, holding their hands up as much as they could, given the limited space.

“Who the fuck has the brain cell right now? Shouldn’t we be sharing it in a time like this?” I shifted so that my arm wasn’t resting awkwardly on a stack of paper towels in a way that kind of jammed my shoulder into my neck.

“The fuck? No? If we split it five ways we’ll die faster than a two-hit-point mage after ignoring a tutorial.” Sadie scowled at me.

“Oddly specific, Sadie.” Nana commented.

“Oh my  _ god _ , everyone shut up.” Emily groaned. “We are here right now, there is nothing we can do about it until we decide to get out.” She took a deep breath, “Did anyone see the situation outside the office?”

I cleared my throat, “More zombies were coming to the door, but it looked like they, uh, door couldn’t, um-”

“They couldn’t open the door?” Emily finished for me and I nodded. “Okay, so we can infer that there is only one out there right now that we have to deal with immediately.”

“Is there anything in this closet we can use as a weapon?” Rose asked.

We took a few moments to look around; Sadie moved to a crouching position on the desk since the rest of us couldn’t move much otherwise. “Sorry Rose,” she said as she leaned forward into Rose, and then Nana. Sadie was batting at something above a shelf until a long stick fell off the edge.

The next thing I consciously registered was Nana holding the stick, a spirit level, before it could land on us.

“Nana, that was so fast,” Sadie gasped. Emily stared at the stick wide-eyed since it would have hit her in the face if it had landed.

“Bitch, the fuck?” Rose hissed.

Nana looked at us before frowning and trying to remove the attention from her. “Listen, Dave punched a steel door down with his bare hands, sort of, and Emily used the force on a fucking zombie and killed it. I can’t imagine any of this should be a surprise by now. Maybe I shat so much so fast that I get to be fast at everything else.”

“I used the  _ what _ ?” Emily knew what the force was, but the force was in Star Wars. Not reality.

“Should, sh-should we look at our files now, by chance?” Sadie mumbled.

“I would like to not do that in a crowded supply closet. I love you guys but I am starting to feel claustrophobic.” Rose said in a leveled, but tense tone. They weren’t joking either, the longer we stayed in the closet, the more sick they appeared. More so than they did when they first woke up, which I found to be weird how quickly I accepted our visible afflictions. Remember those weird black veins on our bodies? Yeah, those were still there. And we were all still ashen-toned like we were sick beyond help. We didn’t look like zombies, but we didn’t look alive either.

I touched one of my forearm and felt my stomach lurch when I felt the thick vein move under my skin. I touched it once more, because nothing felt real in that moment.

“ _ Dave _ ,” Nana handed the level to me, “I hate to put the responsibility on you, but from what I’ve seen so far, you are at least in more control than the rest of us.”

“C-Control?  _ I _ have control?” I shook my head.

“Okay, not that kind of control, but like, you busted the door down before. You can probably whack a zombie with this.” She said.

I reluctantly accepted the impromptu-weapon. I wasn’t sure what material it was made of, but it was as long as my arm and heavy. Bat-like.

_ -blood sprayed from the force of the swing, hitting the ceiling, the wall next to us, splattering with wet sounds- _

“Dave?” I heard Emily’s voice next to me like an echo.

I turned my head to her in a quick motion, “Yep?”

“You good?”

“Peachy -fucking- keen.” I gulped and held the level close to my body.

“Alright, we’re gonna open the door and kill the remaining zombie. Then we’ll deal with the ones outside. Cool?” Sadie suggested.

When all of us agreed with a nod, I turned to face the door again. It opened outward, but even still, I couldn’t hear a zombie on the other side.

I cracked it open just an inch or two, seeing nothing more than the chaos we caused just minutes ago. A little further, and I saw the remaining zombie just, kinda, standing there. As though it had forgotten the lost opportunity of a feast, the zombie stumbled about the room, with no other purpose. Beyond that, I could only sort of see the situation outside the office room. The windows that would have shown the hallway across from us were covered by cheap blinds, leaving very little visible. I couldn’t see bodies moving through them though, so I considered that as a win.

Sometime during my scouting, the computer in the office played the next song on the playlist.

It was ‘Thrift Shop’ by Macklemore, featuring Wanz.

I turned to look behind me, meeting eyes with Sadie.

“I can never escape Macklemore. I left Seattle and he follows me to the other side of the country.” She said with resignation.

Pleased with that, I turned back and was greeted by a rotting face with breath to match. I choked on any sarcastic quip I was going to give Sadie and just when I thought I was going to be a zombie’s meal, the door slammed shut.

“What just happened?” Nana said, “Bruh I’m too short, are we gonna die?”

“No?” I said, but my tone suggested otherwise. The zombie wasn’t close enough to push the door in, was it? I was momentarily grateful that the door opened outward, or we would have been in some serious trouble.

I turned my back to the door, because surely that wouldn’t end horribly, right? Sadie was looking at Emily with raised eyebrows, Emily, who wore an expression that was a combination of terror, confusion, and exhaustion that was unique to her.

“What the fuck, how come I don’t get the force?” Sadie complained, “I’m related to the guy who voiced-”

“I don’t want it!” Emily cried out, “Can we please get the fuck out of this room?” I couldn’t follow much, but I wondered if maybe Emily’s stress had slammed the door shut.

Or maybe I was crazy. I couldn’t rule that one out.

I turned back to the door, hearing the zombie trying to get through. It couldn’t, but hearing it so close was nerve-wracking. I braced myself, and turned the doorknob, and with a single movement, pushed the door outward.

The zombie wheezed as it was thrown backward. We tripped over our own feet trying to get out of the closet; I didn’t realize how stuffy it was until we had more ventilation.

“Stand back,” I said, raising the level above my head. Like I was chopping wood, I brought it down hard into the zombie’s skull while it was still on the ground. I wanted it done and over with, I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

My stomach dropped when I felt the contact and the break. I never wanted to see blood again.

_ -It wasn’t human anymore- _

“There are still a lot outside,” Nana said, pointing to the door. I followed her gaze and saw that while some were still lingering, most of them had resorted to wandering the halls, unaware of our presence in the office. Where did they come from? Did we manage to bring them to us?

“How are we going to get out of here?” Rose asked.

“Dave, this isn’t me doubting you-”

“Doubt me,” I said, interrupting Sadie.

“But I don’t think it’s smart to run out of this room if we have only one weapon.” She finished.

“Did we seriously lock ourselves in this fucking room?” Emily sighed, gripping the messenger bag across her chest like it would shield her. I had forgotten that she was carrying that.

I saw that a few of the stragglers were beginning to crowd around the door again. On the door, since it had a wooden frame but plexiglass middle, there were blinds.

I ignored the questions of my friends as I approached the door, stepping over the corpses of killed (again?) zombies and pulled the blinds down.

“Hey, hey Dave? That’s, uh, that’s not gonna make them disappear.” I heard Rose behind me. The zombies on the other side of the door were still audible, their raspy breaths and growls of hunger before a meal.

“I’m testing something.” I said quietly and backed away. I turned around to face them, and saw a look of understanding on Nana’s face.

“Em, you got those files we printed?” She asked, pointing to the bag at Emily’s chest.

Emily looked down at the bag and then back up at us; at first unsure of what we were suggesting. “Oh shit, yeah, we might understand better what we’re dealing with.” 

Rose sighed, “At least we’re not in the closet anymore,” they said as they pulled an office chair around to sit in. We closed in as Emily started handing out files to us. I had only a few pages to read, and yet my stomach flipped when I felt how weightless it was in my hands. 

I looked at the first page.

 

**SUBJECT NAME: RUSSO, DAVID M**

**SUBJECT AGE: 22**

**SEX: ***

**STATUS: INFECTED WITH NEO-VIRUS; MOD-VIRUS**

 

And I was correct to feel sick, for a number of reasons. I felt something horrible that I wasn’t ready to deal with so I pushed it deep down into a box so that it was a problem for Future Dave, because if I thought about it in that moment I would have passed out.

I instead let myself feel sick about the status. What the fuck were these viruses?

“We’re,” Sadie took a shaky breath, “We’re infected?”

“What the fuck is the Neo-Virus?” Nana placed a hand over her mouth. “What the fuck is a mod-virus?” Her voice rose in pitch.

I looked at theirs too, “It says I’m infected too, is that why we look like this?” I asked, holding my arm out to see the blackened veins. They were just as pronounced as they were before, a stark contrast to the dead-pale skin. The wound from earlier was a dark scar now, no sign of scabbing. 

“Are we gonna end up like them?”

I brought my gaze to Emily, who wore an expression I was all too familiar with. It was a face I saw every morning when I looked in the mirror: resignation, fear, sickness. I had never been so scared of that face until I saw another person wearing it.

Rose shook their head, “No, we can’t. I’m not ready to deal with that, and even still, we would be like, like that by now, right?”

“Any chances we might find files like these on this floor? Mine just says shit about my metabolism and reflex speed.” Nana said, slapping hers down on the desk. “I feel like we’d understand these better if we knew what the fuck a ‘Neo-Virus’ is.”

“Hey, hey, wait a minute,” Sadie cut her off, “Ewan’s file.” She holds it out for the rest of us to read. “He wasn’t infected with the Neo-Virus.”

I leaned in to read and he was in fact, not infected with that. 

**SUBJECT NAME: ARMSTRONG, EWAN J**

**SUBJECT AGE: 24**

**SEX: M**

**STATUS: INFECTED WITH MOD-VIRUS**

 

 “Mod-Virus? There it is again,” Emily said, squinting at the page.

“Well ‘neo’ usually means new. What could ‘mod’ mean?” Rose shrugged.

“Moderated?” I suggested.

“Modified?” Nana said, and I could see the inspiration in her eyes. “There are different ones! Emily, when you were driving to Dave’s apartment, did any of the bodies get up?”

Emily shook her head, “No, all of them were down. Like,  _ dead _ dead.”

“How were we infected? By the water, right?” Sadie asled.

“But we weren’t displaying symptoms, which means that-”

Nana paused at the sound of something cracking.

It was almost comical, how the five of us all turned to look at the door to this room at the same time. How we watched as the blinds began to tremble with the breaking plexiglass, how slowly but surely, the horde of zombies in the hallway managed to do what we thought was impossible.

“Are you kidding me, can’t we get a fucking break?” Rose hissed, I felt a tugging on the back of my shirt and my heart stopped before I realized that it was Rose pulling me back. I stumbled a bit, but caught my footing as we began to migrate as a collective towards the back of the room, away from the door.

If the door had real glass, we would have been in deep shit, but plexiglass doesn’t shatter. I wasn’t exactly to see how many zombies had piled behind it, when the blinds were tangled and torn from the frame it revealed just how many heard us on the floor.

How in the hell were there so many?

“Wait, wait!” I turned to see Sadie at a computer, typing furiously.

“Sadie, now is not the time to write Star Wars fanfiction!” 

“Shut up, Nana!” Sadie countered, tapping her fingers before clenching a fist in frustration. “Fuck, hurry up!”

I whipped my head around, seeing one zombie having fallen through the slim frame where the plexiglass once was. Another fell after, almost comically slow and uncoordinated. If I didn’t know firsthand how strong or terrifying they were, I would have laughed.

Behind me, the computer Sadie was fiddling with dinged, and I heard a triumphant “Finally!”

As I was pulled back some more, I watched Sadie shove a flashdrive into the pocket of her jean jacket and she jumped onto the desk -and then over it- to drag us towards a familiar part of the room.

“Aw come on, this is worse than last Thanksgiving.” Nana groaned as we crammed back into the closet. 

“How crowded it is, or the closet?” I asked.

“Both.”

“This is just fan-fucking-tastic, now we get to suffocate in this closet, or we end up killing each other. Who do you think will be the last one standing, my money’s on Dave.” Emily snarked, crossing her arms as best as she could in the limited space.

“I would say Rose,” Sadie grunted, trying to get back on her perch from the last time we were in the closet, “Dave’s too soft, he crumbles under pressure.”

“And I don’t?” Rose narrowed their eyes at Sadie.

“Did you look at a pretty girl and said you didn’t have a phone when she asked if she could have your number,  _ while the phone was in your hand _ ?” Sadie countered.

“Listen-!” I flushed bright red, even though it was exactly how it sounded. Pretty women were intimidating and I immediately felt unworthy when I saw her in the bar.

“Hey, maybe instead of banking on who becomes unhinged first, we should try to find a way out of this closet?” Nana loudly cleared her throat.

In hopes of maybe seeing something we didn’t see before, we began searching with what little room we had to move. But it was really looking like the only way in and out of the closet was through the door we could no longer use.

“You know, while I was pretty certain I wasn’t gonna make it past forty, this isn’t exactly what I was expecting.” Nana said, leaning against a shelf and holding a hand to her forehead.

“What were you expecting?” Sadie asked, sitting on top of the desk where she sat earlier. She stared at the ceiling with tired, lazy eyes.

“A freak accident. I’m talking something with near-impossible odds.”

I raised my eyebrows at her, “Should we unpack that?”

Nana turned to look at me, “Oh, like you don’t think something similar?”

“Fair enough.”

“Still feel like we should unpack that,” Emily said while she fiddled with something on the cork board. “Whoever the custodian here was, they definitely had feelings about working here and about the strange occurrences in the last twenty years or so.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

Emily unpinned a newspaper clipping and gave it to me to read: Third hiker missing this month. Further down the article, specific lines were highlighted in faded yellow. ‘Forest rangers discourage nature-enthusiasts from entering Washington forest due to dangerous conditions’. Another incident is referenced in the story: a family of five never returned home from their weekend camping trip back in the summer of 2000. A search party got separated and a local man, Willie Cooper, claimed to have found their campsite in horrible disarray, utterly gruesome. He was given a free psychiatric consultation from the director of the local hospital. Cooper moved away shortly after. Nothing was found of the family, not even the campsite Cooper claimed to locate. A vigil was scheduled at the church on Sunday, June 18th 2000.

“And that’s just one of them,” Emily said. I looked up from the clipping and handed it back to her. “Put it in the bag,” she instructed. “We might need it for evidence.”

“How many people went missing overall?” I heard Rose’s voice next to me. I jolted, having not seen them. “What?” They raised a brow at me.

“I’m gonna put a fucking bell on you.” I said as I attempted to catch my breath.

“I’m not  _ that _ quiet.” Rose complained.

Emily narrowed her eyes at them, “Rose, I didn’t notice you there either.”

“I’ve been here the whole time, where would I have gone?” They countered, crossing their arms.

“You’ve been doing that a lot though-”

“ _ Doing what? _ ”

“Shut up!” Sadie interrupted the argument before it could happen. She pointed upward, “One of the tiles is out of place.”

We watched Sadie as she stood up on the desk and punched a ceiling tile out of her way. She stood fully upright, peeking her head above the ceiling tiles. “Guys, do you think we can crawl out of here?”

Nana leaned over the desk to look with Sadie, “Are we about to pull some  _ Mission Impossible _ bullshit?”

“Probably,” Sadie said. “Seriously, I think this is our way out.” She crouched again and looked around before pointing at me. “Dave, is there a box or anything behind you? Something we can use to climb up there,” she instructed me.

Behind me on the shelf were several cardboard boxes but I wasn’t sure which one would best support our weight. There were a couple that were entirely empty until I opened one that was filled with toilet paper rolls. I hoisted it up over my shoulder and passed it towards Sadie. Nana helped me push it onto the desk for Sadie to use as support.

She crawled into the space and simultaneously, the four of us below held our hands up like we expected her to fall through.

“They’re reinforced,” I heard her voice echo through the space above. “Don’t ask me how or why, but it’s holding pretty steady.”

I knew I should have been grateful for an exit, especially when I could hear the crowd of zombies pushing against the door, unsuccessfully. But, I didn’t want to stick around long enough to learn how many zombies it took to break down a door.

Nana and Rose followed Sadie, while Emily and I were last. 

“Don’t forget the stick,” Emily instructed as she hoisted herself up into the ceiling.

“The what?” I mumbled to myself, but then remembered the level I had been using as a weapon. I understood, that was probably smart to bring along, given that I had lost the zombie arm in the office. Not that an arm could really do much to help against the zombies anyway. I grabbed the level and hopped onto the desk, using the level to knock the box off the desk once I was in the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if the zombies were smart enough to attempt the same thing, but I wasn’t about to test that hypothesis. I turned forward, watching the four in front of me crawl.

“Do we know where we’re going?” I asked.

“Nope,” Sadie responded, “Wherever I don’t hear those things sounds good though.”

“Fair enough.”

 

If you asked me if I was claustrophobic or not, I would have said no on any other day.

It took maybe ten minutes for me to feel trapped and on the verge of panic. It helped that I wasn’t in between anyone, just Emily in front of me, but boy did I not like army-crawling on weirdly reinforced ceiling tiles. 

The space was separated by electrical units, perhaps air conditioning but also I didn’t know a damn thing about air conditioning so I wasn’t entirely sure of what I was looking at. We continued in a straight line the whole way, and almost turned left and towards a different path until Rose saw something.

“Guys, wait,” they said. “There’s a grate thing at the end here.”

“A great thing? What’s so great?” Sadie grunted while crawling.

“Is it weed?” I asked sarcastically, and even though I knew it wasn’t likely I briefly enjoyed the fantasy of finding a joint.

“Dave, oh my god,” they muttered. “No, like a gated thing, or some shit. I’m crawling towards it.” They continued forward instead of following Sadie and Nana’s lead.

“Isn’t that the office still? Won’t we just fall into the zombies?” Sadie asked.

“And I can’t tell if I hear them or not, my ear’s been a little fucky lately.” Nana said.

“I don’t hear anything Nana, I don’t think we’re over any zombies.” Emily said.

I couldn’t see what was happening ahead, as the space we were crawling in became more narrow the further we had gone. I could hear Rose grunting, and hitting the alleged grate. A pause.

“Guys, I think this is the stairwell. This is how what’s-his-name got out, right?” Rose called over their shoulder.

“I think so,” I said.

“I can’t get it open though, the screws are kind of really tight.”

In front of me, I saw Emily fiddle with her earring before removing it. “Rose, take this.”

“What is it?”

“My earring.”

“Em, I don’t think that’s gonna work,” Rose started.

“Trust me, remember me telling you about the paycheck Nana dropped into the utility closet at Dave’s?”

I remembered that, and I imagined Nana did as well based on the agitated sigh I heard from her.

“Wait, that  _ worked? _ ” Rose asked, shifting to reach behind them as Emily passed the earring.

“Yeah man, they’re pretty but I only wear them for special occasions because they’re so heavy.”

“Em really has to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, what a queen.” Rose said, I heard some squeaking as I imagined Rose working with the earring.

“Right? And her mind, man, she’s gonna rule the world.” Nana echoed to the side of us.

“Oh my god,” Emily snorted, “Compliment me when I help WHO eradicate the virus.” She said sarcastically.

“I can and  _ will _ compliment my friends, fight me.” Rose said before making a small triumphant sound. Immediately after, I jolted at the sound of metal clanging on a hard surface. “God I love myself,” Rose said.

“Cool, how are we gonna get out?” Sadie asked.

“Fuck.”

“Tuck and roll, Rose.” Nana chuckled, and I followed because there was no way Rose was going to-

They pushed themself forward and into the next space, with a thud and a quick, pained grunt. “Hey, I’m out. Also you should follow.” They said.

One after the other, we piled out of the space and into the fourth floor landing of the staircase. It was weird because while I had dispatched several zombies by that point, I was terrified of crawling out of the vent. What if I broke something upon landing? What if it hurt?

“Dave, c’mon man.” Rose held their hands up, “I’ll catch you.”

I swallowed the anxious lump in my throat, feeling my hands sweating furiously.

“Ah, I think he’s full clam,” Nana said, looking at her hands because she too, understood the struggles of full clam. My hands left sweaty prints on the metal surface.

“Oh my god,” I mumbled under my breath. I inhaled deeply and exhaled, my heart fluttering as I pulled myself forward more but I froze. My blood ran cold.

Something was hissing in the vents, softly, and it wasn’t mechanical. Soft growls and clicking sounds filled the space around me.

I chanced a look over my shoulder but I didn’t move any further ahead.

In the dim utility lights, I saw a shadow. I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at, its outline moved like an animal, bulky in a muscular sense. It was crawling through the vent we came through from the office.

Something long emerged from the shadowy outline, extending outwards from the corner. It was a tongue, or a feeler, or something and I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out for sure.

As I turned around to dive from the vent, I caught a glimpse of the monster at the end. Claws. Flesh. I don’t think it had skin.

 

“Dave, what is-”

I launched out of the vent and onto the tiled landing in a single motion. I felt myself choke as the air was knocked out of me for a brief second, “We have to leave,” I rasped.

Nana opened her mouth to say something but a deafening shriek echoed throughout the stairwell. The sound of crunching metal and slick movements were amplified by the tight space the monster was slipping through.

“What the fuck is that?” Sadie yelped, pulling me to my feet.

“Who cares? Run, run for your fucking lives!” I pulled Emily and Sadie towards the stairs up. I motioned for Nana and Rose to go ahead, not moving forward until I was covering the end. 

The same feeler emerged from the opening and I gripped- nothing. I looked around and realized that I was no longer holding my impromptu weapon.

On the other side of the landing, was my level. I must have dropped it and forgot about it entirely when I yeeted myself the fuck out from the opening. I had less than a few seconds to make up my mind and decide if it was worth risking it. I had to think, make a decision, thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthink-

I dashed for the level, sliding on the tile to haul ass back to the stairs. The monster shrieked again, this time much closer if not right behind me. I willed myself to not look and instead skipped steps as I ascended, hearing the others calling for me.

“ _ Dave there’s a door up here, hurry! _ ” Sadie shouted.

I scrambled to catch up with them, seeing from my peripheral vision the monster following closely. It moved like a cat, but could stick to walls with its claws. It tore at the walls like it was as soft as potting soil. With a leap that would impress notorious BDG, the monster flung itself right beside me, sinking its claws into the wall maybe a few feet away from me.

With an intimate view of the monster, I could see that there was skin, it was just very thin, as though the epidermis and dermis layers were as thick as a sheet of paper. I could see its brain. The teeth were repulsive and dripping blood and flesh and saliva. 

And I saw then that this monster had no eyes.

With a swift hit, I jabbed the butt of my level into its face, prompting it to wail horribly. If anything, I annoyed it as opposed to doing actual damage.

The monster grabbed my level with a clawed hand, approaching with its snapping jaws.

I steadied myself and with the monster on the level, pulled it off the wall like I was flipping drying gum off of a table. It didn’t need much momentum after that, just a push and the monster was tumbling over the staircase railing. It’s cries fading as it fell down a few floors.

I needed to be better about not losing all of my weapons.

My body was hurting so much, I knew I pulled some muscles or sprained some joints trying to hurl that thing away from us. Places here and there were throbbing, from the pain or my heart or both.

“Are you okay?” Rose asked.

“As okay as I can be,” I said, my voice shaking after the effort I had exerted, physical and mental. I was surprised I made it out of that alive at all.

“Guys, we have a problem,” Sadie said.

Emily turned to face her, “What is it?”

“I can’t find the keycard,” she responded, shoving her hands in her pockets and pulling out only the thumb drive she swiped from the office.

“Did you have it in your pockets to begin with?” Nana suggested, “A lot of things just happened.”

“Shit, I don’t remember,” Sadie covered her face with her hands. “Dammit, I don’t know what happened to it. We can’t open the door without it.”

“We could have Dave brute force it again?” Nana shrugged, “It’s not ideal but we gotta-”

A faint shriek echoed up the stairwell. I knew I didn’t kill that thing but it was still alarming to hear that it was on its way up again.

“Even if he does, how do we close the door behind us? That thing’s gonna come up here again!” Rose hissed.

Sadie muttered a string of curses under her breath as she stared at the reader on the door. She began pressing buttons, soft  _ ‘dings’ _ following her motions.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Anything!” She whined softly, breathing hard. She balled her fists up as the screen kept flashing red with each attempt she made before beeping quickly. Sadie backed up and the screen turned blank. After a few seconds it became white, displaying the words: “ EMERGENCY OVERRIDE ”.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sadie gasped. 

The growls were approaching us. I was unsure of how far away that monster was, it could have been only a floor below us for all I knew.

“Emergency override? Rose said, “This stairwell is for emergency uses, right?”

“I don’t know, maybe. Every establishment has staircases in case of fire or evacuation, don’t they?” Nana looked between us, “Maybe that means it can be opened manually?”

Sadie looked at the screen again, and pressed the green button on the keypad.

The screen changed, then presenting the words “ ALLOW MANUAL OVERRIDE ?”

She pressed the button again, allowing us to input an authorization code.

“You’re shitting me,” she exhaled, becoming stiff as the shrieking echoes came closer. “Fuck me, what was the number again?”

“4903,” Emily said, keeping her eyes on the stairwell. “I see a shadow, we gotta hurry.”

The machine chimed and something in the door clanged as though it unlocked. 

“No shit, you did it, man!” I exclaimed excitedly as Sadie turned the handle.

Emily yelped, backing into us and when I turned I understood why. The monster was perched on a railing, approaching quickly. I didn’t even have a weapon to defend us like last time.

“Emily, try the force thing!” Rose grabbed the back of her shirt to pull Emily closer to us for safety.

_ “I can’t, I can’t! _ ”

I stepped forward but felt myself pushed backwards into a new space. Staring forward, I saw that I was shoved by Sadie into the room we had just opened. Nana followed after, with Rose and Emily tumbling after.

Sadie whipped around the door, crying out as she tripped over her own feet into the space with us. The monster’s body slammed the door shut before it could enter.

I fell backwards onto the floor, listening to the monster wailing and scratching and pummeling at the door but to no avail. That door was sturdy and not budging anytime soon. The light above the door flashed red after having been green. I hoped that meant it was locked.

“Oh god,” Emily sobbed, taking deep breaths. 

Rose stared at the door, wide eyed, with an expression similar to the zombies we had to fight. I worried that they were in shock.

Nana was laughing, not hysterically to my knowledge. But maybe she had had enough of this night. “Man, fuck this shit, fuck it!”

Sadie pushed herself up into a sitting position, gasping as she moved. She choked out a pained grunt.

“Sadie, you okay?” I asked, crawling towards her.

“Fuck no,” she inhaled sharply. I crawled around, probably paling at what I saw. Her left leg was marred with deep gashes, bleeding profusely. She didn’t trip over her feet, she was injured by that thing.

“Hey, hey!” I waved at the others, “Sadie’s hurt, we gotta do something.”

“Huh?” Nana looked at me like she had just come out of a daze, and you know what, that was fair.

“We gotta cut off circulation, she’s bleeding like a  _ lot _ ,” I said.

Emily stood up and unbuckled her belt, “Use this,” she instructed.

I turned back to Sadie, who had paled even more. “Talk about some shit luck, right?” She gave an emotionless grin.

“Right?” I chuckled nervously.

As Emily instructed me, she searched the room we were in for anything akin to a first-aid kit. I wasn’t paying much attention to my surroundings because of, well, yeah. But, from what I could see, we were in what looked like a surveillance room. There were screens showing video feeds of the cameras throughout the facility. I didn’t even realize there were cameras.

I didn’t dwell on it for two long, because the wounds on Sadie’s leg weren’t bleeding as much as before. 

“Fuck, that’s ugly,” Sadie looked away with a grimace. I wasn’t sure if she was going to pass out or not.

“Talk to Rose about  _ Star Wars _ .” I said as Emily brought over the first aid kit.

“What?”

“Rose said that Kylo Ren was the worst  _ Star Wars  _ antagonist since Jar Jar Binks,” I was trying to instigate a discussion, anything. Even if we had some kind of healing bullshit, risking shock wasn’t worth it.

“Okay first of all, jackass, Jar Jar wasn’t supposed to be an antagonist and also George Lucas had to apologize for-” She grunted in discomfort, clenching her fist tightly as Emily and I started to sanitize the gashes. Two of them were small, but the one in the middle was dark and deep. I felt a little dizzy by the look of it, and was alarmed by how quickly it had started to clot. 

“What if Kylo gets a shitty redemption arc?” Rose asked, purposefully looking only at Sadie’s face and not at what Emily and I were doing.

As Sadie and Rose, and sometimes Nana, bickered back and forth about the nature of storytelling and mainstream franchises under capitalism, Emily and I did what we could to wrap the scratches in bandages.

“Zuko got a better redemption arc because he actually worked towards redemption. Kylo might not even get that even if the writers get the chance to put some love and care into it.” Sadie said, regaining only a little bit of her color. 

Nana snorted, “Okay, but can we expect anything to top  _ Avatar _ ?”

“Isn’t  _ The Dragon Prince _ supposed to be really good?” I asked.

Sadie nodded slowly, “Yeah, there’s even a character who uses sign language. Done by the same writers of  _ Avatar _ of course.”

We were desperately holding on to any shreds of normalcy that we could. Smack talk about fandoms, compliments to each other as though nothing had changed about our night. Every moment was a threat to either our physical or mental state, and the longer we stayed in the facility, the more unhinged I was afraid I would become.

 

“You know, big ol’ lesbian in a bloodied flower dress is not the look I was going for when I got dressed this morning.” Sadie sighed as Emily secured the bandage.

“Think of it this way, it’s primed for the blood of your enemies when we get out of this shit.” Emily snorted, holding a hand out to steady her as she stood upright.

Nana and I stood in front of the desk. There were a few keyboards along it, with some buttons that were either innocent or could destroy the whole planet. I wasn’t entirely sure the validity of that worry, but to me it felt more and more likely the longer the night continued. On some of the monitors was a map of the facility, and it wasn’t comforting to look at. There was a floor below us that had blank rooms, leading me to believe that that was somehow even higher clearance than what the researchers might have had. We skipped two floors on the way to the security room: one which was a medical bay and a cafeteria, with an entertainment lounge in the corner. Above that was a floor dedicated to what looked like dormitories. Some of these people might not have seen the sunlight in a long time. 

On the other side of the room, was a door that we hadn’t entered yet nor could we get through. But through a tiny window, I could see a very short hallway leading to an elevator. I let myself believe that it led to the outside.

“It’s eleven. We’ve been here past twelve hours,” Nana said quietly. “Or something like that.”

“We’re gonna get out,” I said, hearing Emily and Rose behind me. I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying, “I’m sure there’s a way around the biometric.”

I kicked myself for forgetting the damn arm. I should have figured that there was no way we’d be done with it. I tried to not berate myself too much, since we didn’t have enough time to form an escape plan that included a disembodied arm, but it was hard to feel forgiving. 

After the excitement had died down, and the monster outside had to wander off, we realized that there was a corpse in the room off in a corner. Some guy in a lab coat. He had dark hair and a scar on his upper lip. His hair was parted in the middle in a manner that kind of reminded me of a slightly less-feral Crispin Glover. He had a cafeteria pass in his breast pocket; I didn’t know when Henry Steele died, but it looked like he got an easy way out. Every so often, one of us would turn to keep an eye on it. Just in case. We tried his hand for the reader and got nothing, leaving us with only four attempts remaining.

“How did we even get in here?” Nana asked, “The door outside had one of these, didn’t it?”

“I don’t remember, to be honest.”

“Fair.”

I hummed in thought, not sure of what to do. I didn’t know anything about the facility, so I felt myself becoming increasingly frustrated. I didn’t know how to bypass a fucking authorization code. It was like my first night working at the restaurant when I accidentally charged double the ticket amount and was trying to do a refund. Except death wasn’t a possible outcome back then.

To my side, Sadie groaned, “It was kind of a blur. I don’t really remember either.”

“Well the code you put in might work, but I’m kind of afraid to try it in case we lose attempts.”

“What code?”

Nana and I exchanged a look before turning to her, “The, the code we used back in the lab,” Nana said.

Sadie frowned and nodded, “Right, right.” She was quiet.

I opened my mouth to say something when the computer screen in front of me flashed white.

SYSTEM TIME-OUT; COUNTDOWN INITIATED

00:05:00 BEFORE FAIL-SAFE PROTOCOL

A clock appeared where the words were, counting down from five minutes. Did we take too long? It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a procedure we were doing everything but following.

“Guys?” I tensed, my hands holding the fabric of my shirt with tight grips.

“What the fuck?” Rose approached the desk, “Fucking countdown for what?” Their voice raised in pitch. “The fuck is a fail-safe protocol?”

“And why do we only have five minutes?” Emily gasped. “Oh god, um, shit.” I saw her turn away from the desk. “Are there any manuals?”

“Manuals?” Rose parroted.

“Yes, manuals. There’s no way that they wouldn’t have  _ something _ like that around. How do they train new employees?” Emily spoke into the cabinets she desperately searched through.

“This isn’t a fucking cash register, Em, I bet this shit is like black ops.” Nana responded, bending down to rip through drawers for anything that looked like it could have been useful. “Christ, are we gonna blow up? Oh man, what if the Raccoon City thing really was an explosion?”

I turned around, wondering where Rose went to in all of this. They were against a wall, close to hyperventilating. “I can’t, oh my god, I can’t.” They crumbled to the floor, sitting cross-legged and staring blankly at the floor. Seeing them detach like this was terrifying. On a new level. I had lived with them for years and not seen that face on them; though seldom are people expected to go through life or death situations on a regular basis.

I knelt down next to them, finding myself to not do much more than that. Maybe I was detaching as well. Did we have a timer going? How long did we have left?

Were we going to die?

Was all of this, the desperation to make it out of here, was all that for nothing?

Somewhere in the distance, I heard an alarm. A red light flashed in the room.

My head felt like it was underwater, even as people were speaking around me, I couldn’t hear anything. It was muffled. Nothing was real. Didn’t I have that project to finish, still? Would the professor give me an extension? Maybe I could-

A scream broke through and I jolted back to reality.

Sadie stood, facing away from the monitors, hands to her head as she shrieked.

**00:00:04**

Behind her, something began to smoke. Electricity cracked in the air as several of the monitors started to fill with static.

**00:00:03**

Screens cracked and the red light began to blink faster.

**00:00:02**

Everything was so loud, so loud- I thought my head was going to explode. I felt tears run down my cheeks as I curled into myself. I was going to break-

**00:00:01**

Everything was silent.

The alarm stopped, the light stopped, everything was still save for the sizzling tech equipment on the security desk. The screens were blank as streams of smoke rose from the cracks. Everything was turned off except for a single emergency light that bathed the room in a dim yellow glow.

“Are we dead?” I croaked.

“No, I think we’re alive?” Emily sighed. “Oh god, Sadie-”

I looked to Sadie, and she looked like she’d been through hell.

The veins on her skin were dark as though they were inked onto her skin, not blood running under it. Her eyes were bloodshot, and blood was dripping from her nose at an alarming rate. Her breathing was ragged, and she stared forward but not at me. She collapsed onto the rolling chair behind her. Her hands shook.

There was a click followed by hissing. The door we couldn’t get through before was opened, swinging towards us slowly as though we had passed some kind of test.

Sadie stared at the newly accessible passage. “What the fuck,” she paused, “Was  _ that _ ?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, thank you for reading! I can't say when I'll get chapter six out but I'm excited because of the progress in this one. Maybe it'll motivate me now that I get to write some new scenes and shit.  
> Summary of the chapter if you needed to skip:  
> Dave and the gang find themselves on a new floor of the facility but notice that it is an office space for lower-clearance employees. They're looking around when they get swarmed by the zombies, prompting some heavy improvising. Some stuff is learned about Emily's abilities, and jokes about the force are made. Same with Nana's, and Rose's is hinted at.  
> They leave the office space by hopping into the maintenance vents in the ceiling, and as they bust out into a stairwell, are chased by a familiar monster in the Resident Evil franchise. They only barely make it out alive but Sadie gets injured in the process, though not fatally. They wind up in a security room for the facility and in an attempt to get out, a fail safe countdown begins and just before everything goes to shit, we see Sadie's ability emerge even though the gang don't quite understand what it is.


End file.
